Ideas I want to write about
the best storytellers understand that an essential part of their craft is knowing how to pack maximal meaning into minimal words.
The 'Atomic' Secret of the World's Greatest Writers
To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Maybe introduce this idea of the mini-memoir
I find myself drawn to literature more now than in the past; not the individual works as much as the idea of literature—the heroic effort and nobility of our human desire to make beauty of our minds—which moves me to tears, and I have to brush them away, quickly, before anyone notices.
Ruth Ozeki • A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel (ALA Notable Books for Adults)
If I had to guess, I think the general disappearance of good manners has something to do with how we’ve been conditioned to view each other: as things, not people. We see other people as things that can get us things. Maybe we have such little respect for one another because we have such little respect for ourselves. The commodification of the self... See more
All I know is what I have words for
“Like the ants, we relate to strangers based on whether they share our identity,” Moffett writes. But whereas ants use odour to identify one another, “for Homo sapiens just about anything will do... Humans evolved to be living billboards for their identities.” We are deeply concerned about the story-of-self that we broadcast to others. Historically... See more
This is Why We Smash Teslas (and Shoot Cases of Bud Light with MP5 Submachine guns)
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
5-Bullet Friday — The Odd Benefits of Donating Blood, My HBS Case Study, A Tool for Using Miles and Points, The Proust Questionnaire, and More
Pretending/posturing
