Agalia Tan

We’re not just bits of intelligence bouncing through the world. We have complicated emotions, and nuanced and unspoken social hierarchies. We act irrationally and pursue goals that may not be in our best interests. We don’t exist within the clean confines of an operating system or a laboratory—we act and react in a highly variable world. Creating a... See more

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy; the chance to draw back; always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elemental truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one commits oneself, Providence moves all. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never

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There are infinite quotidian human experiences ripe for interpreting: putting off housework, caring about who I sit next to at a dinner party, struggling to get dressed. They stack up every day. I’m particularly fond of using them to draw ungenerous conclusions: I’m shallow, selfish, lazy, dishonest. I’ve trained myself away from defending my... See more

When I say serious I

don’t

mean solemn and tedious.

I mean something closer to ‘dynamic persistence’, and a sense of humor is often critical to that. It’s hard to persist for a long time if you ‘take yourself too seriously’. You become rigid, stiff, the opposite of dynamic, and eventually you bang up against something that breaks you one way or... See more

the first task is not to feedback or critique. The first task is to fully step into the idea. Yet far too often, nascent, half-baked, vaguely sketched out ideas find themselves in the dock, alone. Surrounded not by accomplices, but by judges.

When a group comes together, noise is easy. Just a few people have to make a commotion for noise to happen.

But silence requires everyone to be in sync.

"We're not trying to please everybody. We're not cooking for critics. I cook for customers. If I started cooking for critics, I'd probably be really miserable." - David Chang