Happy 2014, year of the horse and all that, people. Best wishes to you and yours.
If people in your life aren’t uncomfortable then you’re not really writing – Chris Rock quoting Quentin Tarantino
When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful – Eric Thomas
The video source is inspiring.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. – Max Ehrmann
If you’re passionate about something, then you can be a good fan…if you’re passionate about something and you’re good at it, it can be a hobby – Tina Seelig
From Tina’s ETL talk. Didn’t expect her to reach this true but tiger mom-like conclusion.
She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her… – Antoine de Saint Exupery in The Little Prince
So beautiful, this…
A point of view is worth 80 IQ points – Alan Kay
Apparently Jeff Bezos is a big Alan Kay fan.
Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place – Nassim Taleb
Am reading, and struggling with, Antifragile. More on that later…
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. – Flannery O’Connor
Yes. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, you write to find out what you know, which usually isn’t much.
before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. – zen saying
People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines – Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Machine actions are essentially programmed routines. Human actions are essentially developed habits. Routines = habits. Humans = largely self-taught, slowly-evolving machines (emphasis on ‘slowly’).
You know what fine stands for? Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. – Mark Wahlberg in Italian Job
We travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. – Pico Iyer
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. […] If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, in Walden
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. – G.K. Chesterton
To begin a new novel, I look for the biggest problem in my life that I can’t solve or tolerate. Something that drives me nuts, but I can’t fix. Then I find a metaphor that allows me to explore the problem, exaggerating and expanding it beyond reason. I build it up to the worst scenario possible and then find a way to solve it. By the time the book is done, I’ve exhausted all of my emotions around the original problem. Whatever it was, it no longer bothers me. And typically, during the time of writing, the problem has resolved itself. It’s like magic. Try it. It will keep you alive in this world of bullshit. – Chuck Palahniuk
My complete list of quotes is here.