David Pennington

A book where you can enter "sport" and end up with "a diversion of the field" -- this is in fact the opposite of what I'd known a dictionary to be. This is a book that transmutes plain words into language that's finer and more vivid and sometimes more rare.

Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior fro

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The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.

What does it tell us about progress if the most influential technological innovation of the century is clearly destroying lives on a massive scale?

Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn't seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that's already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what's be... See more

When you reduce yourself to a product, you sacrifice the very essence of what makes you unique. Your quirks, your weirdness, your vulnerabilities, your authentic self-these are the things that resonate with others, not a polished, palatable persona. The impactful creators understand this.

It’s ok to wait, and it’s definitely ok to de-wheel from the hamsterism of today’s productivity theatre. In fact, you might need to if you really want to dream up a monster story.

Q: Who are your favorite artists in any genre, classic or contemporary? Your favorite writers? Where did you get those shoes?

A: It has to be Goya ‘s Caprichios at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and the Napoleonic Wars. (See Milos Foreman ‘s Goya’s Ghosts which shows the awesome connections.) I love Picasso ‘s freedom. Leonardo da Vinci, of cou... See more

in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.