“When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That’s bullshit! They’re just hiding their bullshit!”
-Robert McKee
“Stories build cultures by answering the big questions.”
-Robert McKee
“Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.”
-Robert McKee
“Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can’t just live. That’s the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.”
-Robert McKee
“Leaders use story to author the future.”
-Robert McKee
“If someone sleeps poorly it is hard to keep them alive. If someone sleeps well, it is hard to kill them.”
-Robb Wolf
“In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.”
-Jeff Bezos
“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”
-Jeff Bezos
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair
“Action expresses priorities.”
-Gandhi
“Mainstream media: 80% stuff someone told them. 10% stupidity. 10% arrogance.”
-Seth Roberts
“Many men who transgress justice, honor appearance over reality.”
-Aeschylus
“For every complex problem, there is a simple solution that doesn’t work.”
-HL Mencken
“…for all men do their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good.”
-Aristotle
“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
“That’s powerful branding in America: in opposition to what you hate.”
-TLP
“Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.”
-Alain de Botton