conversational creativity

When drawing, the trick is to spend more time looking at the thing you are trying to draw than at your picture. This is true for writing, too.

Dostoevsky, unlike most other authors, treats his characters as full individuals, as if they are too big to fit in his head: he isn’t using them as mouth pieces but is listening to them. His books are polyphonic: they are made up of a multitude of voices, each with their own inner logic and perspective, and there is no voice that stands above the... See more

Intelligence is a form of friendship with the world. It can’t be cultivated out of fear of it.

It’s not that I know how to do this. It’s that my soul is guiding me through this.

—life mantra

There are only so many ways to begin talking, but with each exchange, the combinatorial space of what might come next expands dramatically. By the tenth turn of a genuine dialogue, we’re navigating billions of potential conversational states.