INTERVIEWER Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them? FAULKNER Read it four times.

Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors.

One of the things that surprised me the most was to see that for any piece of work being shared, designers would put together a keynote deck for it. It could be the smallest thing, like a quick look at the latest work progression, or big presentations, of course. At Apple, designers use the power of storytelling to influence others, instead of just

This, then, is the key sleight-of-hand at the heart of our psychosocial problems: We pretend we’re in charge, both to others and even to ourselves, but we’re less in charge than we think. We pose as privileged insiders, when in fact we’re often making the same kind of educated guesses that any informed outsider could make. We claim to know our own

Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.

— Neil Strauss

I still bought many books, but more and more I read in them, rather than being whisked away by them. At some time impossible to pinpoint, I had begun to read more to be informed than to be immersed, much less to be transported.

Stewart and the board had decided on our pricing plan early on: $9 per user per month, later amended to $8 (“because it felt better”). “Less than the cost of a catered lunch for your team, once a month,” Stewart would say to prospective customers.