Quotes

He’d quote Wilder: “Give the audience two plus two and let them make four.” 

I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.
— to the Los Angeles Times, 1989

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

When you’re alone with a canvas or a blank screen, the world and its bristles and burs fades away. There’s a new universe and you, the artist, are its divine fashioner. When in this creative mode, anxiety disappears and a new set of rules unfolds.

The truth is whispered while opinions are shouted.

“In my whole life I’ve never been good at something I wasn’t very interested in. It just doesn’t work. There’s no substitute for strong interest.”

— Charlie Munger

“People don’t think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In a way failure is a beautiful thing, because when the dust settles there’s nowhere to go but up, and it’s a freedom. You can’t lose more, but you can gain.
— from Room to Dream, 2018

“The advice I like to give anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

— Chuck Close

"It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. This makes it nearly impossible to think outside the standard paradigm."

Giant sequoias, advanced organisms, towering mountains – it builds the most jaw-dropping features of the universe. And it does so silently, where growth is almost never visible right now but staggering over long periods of time.

It’s quiet compounding, and it’s a wonder to see.

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.

They’re like fish. If you get an idea that’s thrilling to you, put your attention on it and these other fish will swim into it. It’s like a bait. They’ll hook on to it and you’ll get more ideas. And you just pull them in.
— to the Guardian, 2018

“If I’m the smartest person in the room, I’m in the wrong room.”

Being alive means to continue to change 

- Jerry Garcia 

Attention isn't free. It's the most valuable thing you spend.

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”

— Steve Jobs

Don't work for people you don't want to become.

“There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

“There is no formula for success—you just begin and then you continue. I’m often asked how to have a career in stand-up and the answer is confoundingly simple: Do the work. Over and over again, just do the work. After you build the courage to get onstage that first time, it’s all about repetition.”

— Cameron Esposito

“For a long time, I looked for consensus. I think consensus is really the enemy of scale, and so I used to say, “Whenever we’re making an important decision, there should be winners in the room and losers. We shouldn’t find that negotiated settlement that everyone is happy with. Somebody should be unhappy, three or four people should walk out unhappy, and one should walk out happy, and we’re all going to be good with it.” As you get bigger, the gravity pulls you towards consensus, and I think consensus is the enemy of greatness.”

— Brian Halligan

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest." - African Proverb

“Work hard in silence. Let success be your noise.”

Worrying is a cheap replacement for caring. Complaining is a cheap replacement for fixing. Outrage is a cheap replacement for supporting.

“People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.”

— Thomas Mitchell

Tunnels

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson