Ben Cuan

People pay to see others believe in themselves.

I find explaining any actually interesting idea usually requires explaining like 5 subsidiary ideas. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky it’s like 25 and either they’re ready for a three hour lecture or you’re not going to succeed.

Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you.

I write like the 12 dollar desk salad, the bar that packs 20 grams of protein and plastic into one 200-calorie brick. But good writing, like a good meal, needs fat. It should indulge readers, is meant to be chewed and enjoyed, affording a generous escape from the prosaic and mundane.

I know that people are too eager to recommend their current lifestyle and disavow their developmentally important previous decisions.