300 Arguments

Every success story can be told as a series of failures.

It’s easier to speak to a crowd, to stare into the spotlight, than it is to look into a human face.

There are two kinds of people: those who can’t perform the act when they’re sad and those who perform it only to escape sadness. I have a theory that the second kind of person lives longer.

Think of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book’s quotable passages.

Respect the one-hit wonder not for his one hit but for all the days he must have suffered afterward, trying for another.

It isn’t so much that geniuses make it look easy; it’s that they make it look fast.

I don’t love writing; I love having a problem I believe I might someday write my way out of.

I annotated my friend’s book manuscript with scribbles on every page. She annotated mine with a single note: This needs to be better. She trusted that I would know what to do, and I did.

It can be worth forgoing marriage for sex, and it can be worth forgoing sex for marriage. It can be worth forgoing parenthood for work, and it can be worth forgoing work for parenthood. Every case is orthogonal to all the others. That’s the entire problem.

The first beautiful songs you hear tend to stay beautiful because better than beauty, which is everywhere, is the memory of first discovering beauty.