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It is actually true that life is all about "who you know". But who you know is largely dependent on who you are and what you do, and the people you know can't do anything for you if you're not doing good work.

Journalists should treat fringe scientific claims with considerable skepticism and find out what major peer-reviewed papers or assessments have to say about them. Moreover, they should adhere to the principle that the more outlandish or dramatic the claim, the more skepticism it warrants.

Art is not only made from things that "spark joy." Art is also made out of what is ugly or repulsive to us. Part of the artist's job is to help tidy up the place, to make order out of chaos, to turn trash into treasure, to show us beauty where we can't see it.

Our culture mostly celebrates early successes, the people who bloom fast. But those people often wither as quickly as they bloom. [...] I don't want to know how a thirty-year-old became rich and famous; I want to hear how an eighty-year-old spent her life in obscurity, kept making art, and lived a happy life.

“You can’t prove what’s going to happen in the future,” explains Naomi Oreskes, who has written extensively on the uses of modeling. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a rational basis for action.”

If you ever find that you're the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.

"You must take a year off, one of these days, before you’re old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you’ll see the world in a different way."

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online, you can become the person you really want to be. Fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about. [...] Stick with it, maintain it, and let it change with you over time.

He talked, and listened, and tried to do the hardest thing of all.

He tried to understand.

The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best— write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career. Whenever you're at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, "What would make a better story?"

Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time. Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove.

The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can't refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.