Instead of asking “Do I have a talent for this?”, one should ask "Do I want to have a talent for this?".
Walter Isaacson on the link between suffering and greatness and those with happy childhoods:
“We grow up with fewer demons but we grow up with less drive. We end being Boswell and not Johnson. We end up being the observer and not the doer. Respect those who are in the arena…”
A few... See more
From Christopher Alexander foreword to Richard Gabriel's "Patterns Of Software":
In my life as an architect, I find that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low. If I ask a student whether her design is as good as Chartres, she... See more
I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.”