Rob Tourtelot
- You’re right that profound grief quickly pushes you away from both certitude and indifference, which are unproductive feelings—
That’s right. Certitude and indifference. They’re the problems with this world.from Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life by Amanda Petrusich
- START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS
from David Mamet Memo to "The Unit" Writing Staff by David Mamet
- When you look back at the most fruitful moments of your life years from now, you’ll be surprised to discover how many of them unfolded amid a big loss or a crisis or in the face of a giant unknown.
from Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger by Heather Havrilesky
Smaller moments, to be sure. Tiny, even. Moments no one would have recognized had they witnessed them firsthand. But they are easier to tell and just as good as the big moments. Maybe better.
from Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling by Dan Kennedy
Often, in our doubt that we have a real story to tell, we hold something back, fearing that we don’t have anything else. And this can be a form of trickery. Surrendering that thing is a leap of faith that forces the story to attention, saying to it, in effect, “You have to do better than that, and now that I’ve denied you your trick, your first-ord
... See morefrom A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
If you know almost nothing, almost anything will tell you something.
from How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business by Douglas W. Hubbard
- On the other hand, no person we have loved is ever fully gone. When they die or vanish, they are physically no longer present, but their personhood permeates our synapses with memories and habits of mind, saturates an all-pervading atmosphere of feeling we don’t just carry with us all the time but live and breathe inside. Or the opposite happens, w... See more
from Your Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing by Maria Popova
- “It’s against this background of seeking satisfaction amidst ceaseless change, that you can see how radical an act of meditation actually is—meditation is the act of calling off the search, it is the art of doing nothing.” – Sam Harris
from #599: New Insights from Sam Harris, Dr. Peter Attia, Ramit Sethi, and Elizabeth Gilbert | The Tim Ferriss Show • Podcast Notes by Tim Ferriss
The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results. The best stories give rise to unanswered questions.
from Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling by Dan Kennedy