The Boxer on What Art Costs
“You throw yourself away to be an artist.”
Julianne Moore on Little Flames
“Acting is like this little flame. If someone comes along and says, ‘this is what I think!’ they might just blow it out and then you can’t reach it anymore.”
Reminds me of what it’s like to have any idea, creative or commercial or a mix of the two.
Make the Right Thing the Easy Thing
“Make the right thing the easy thing.”
?
Wish I knew who’s responsible for this one, but I’ll be damned if it ain’t my favorite definition of design and philosophy of product development.
The Reeve Will Watch the Manor
“Originally in Anglo-Saxon England the reeve was a senior official with local responsibilities under the Crown e.g. as the chief magistrate of a town or district. Subsequently, after the Norman conquest, it was an office held by a man of lower rank, appointed as manager of a manor and overseer of the peasants. In this later role, historian H. R. Loyn observes, “he is the earliest English specialist in estate management.”
[…] Each unit had a court, and an officer to implement decisions of that court: the reeve. Thus different types of reeves were attested, including high-reeve, town-reeve, port-reeve, shire-reeve (predecessor to the sheriff), reeve of the hundred, and the reeve of a manor.”
My last name is Reeves, so I found this lil’ wiki article a hoot. I have always had a knack for estate management.
Charles Lamb’s Counterpoint to a Healthy Life
“What have I gained by health? intolerable dulness. What by early hours and
moderate meals?—a total blank.”
What Samuel Beckett Wants
In 1932 a friend (Walter Lowenfels) asked Beckett, “You sit there saying nothing while the world is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you want to do?” Beckett, according to Bair, “crossed his legs and drawled: ‘Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.’”
∞
Bernbach on What Principles Cost You
“It isn’t a principle until it costs you money.”
Bill Bernbach
David Vanderveen on Why We’re Afraid of Doubt
“We’re afraid of doubt only because we haven’t learned to love mystery yet.”
Not to “understand that it’s important” or to “get the sense that it undergirds everything” but to “love” mystery.
That is an interesting idea. How do you do that without becoming some unhinged crazy person?
Regardless this conversation was a delight to listen to for me.
Barrett Brooks Haunting Writing Advice
“Work today for the body of work you want to have in 5 years.”
He said this on our podcast a few months ago and I can’t shake it. I’m not sure what the body of work I want to have in 5 years is, but I know what I’m making right now isn’t it.
Kathy Sierra on Mediocrity
“We all spend way too much time practicing being crappy or mediocre. And we spend most of our time being exposed to people who are also crappy or mediocre at the thing we do.”