Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience, writing is the stricter test. You have to commit to a single, optimal sequence of words. Less can go unsaid when you don't have tone of voice to carry meaning. And you can focus in a way that would seem excessive in... See more

He says that being a hater, even if you’re actually right, is fundamentally uninteresting, and just being mean about other people’s work, even if you do it privately, doesn’t make you smarter or better. He says that Wyeth’s essential problem is that he doesn’t just have a cop in his head, he has every imagined audience and every response they would... See more

When I have given oral presentations, I reach my people more directly than if I’d written everything down for them to read. When people can see your face and hear the melody of your voice, your point gets across more vividly. Language evolved, after all, for face-to-face contact, not rendered as glyphs on paper.Imagine a square divided into four... See more

The first belief is that reading “seriously” matters , especially if you take your taste/intellect/capacity to create seriously. The definition of “serious” is highly personal, of course, but all of us have an instinctive sense of what it means and when we aren’t doing it. We usually know when we’re reading something that’s good for us—and we know,... See more