meghna

John McPhee, Draft No4 : "If something interests you, it goes in—if not, it stays out. That’s a crude way to assess things, but it’s all you’ve got. Forget market research. Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments ... See more

I’ve never been much of a note-taker because memory is such a useful filter for interestingness. When I have an idea, I wait to see if it can survive in the wilderness of my mind. I only act on those that prove themselves via intellectual natural selection.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s what’s required to overcome it. Just so, optimism isn’t about ignoring problems, it’s about choosing to believe that they’re soluble.

The field where friends have met is consecrated forever. Man seeks friendship out of the desire to realize a home here... The friend is like wax in the rays that fall from our own hearts. My friend does not take my word for anything, but he takes me. He trusts me as I trust myself. We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that th... See more

This imaginative interpenetration of experience is necessary for the greatest challenge of consciousness — understanding what it is like to be another. Without it, there can be no love, for we cannot love whom we do not understand — then we are pseudo-loving a projection. A sign of healthy love, therefore, is the ability to be reliable and responsi... See more

Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age : “Now nanotechnology had made nearly anything possible, and so the cultural role in deciding what should be done with it had become far more important than imagining what could be done with it.”