Where Books and Readers Come Together
“The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him.”
“They seemed to me now no more than the purely subjective, impotent, illusory creations of my temperament.”
Some “secrets of success”: “rapport, empathy, persuasion, cooperation, and consensus building.”
“How much do I honestly know about him? And he knows even less about me.”
‘You can hear rumors,’ I said, ‘but you can’t know them.’
“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos.”
“I opened my eyes and watched the droplets of water fly up like sparks from a fire.”
“The continual afternoon rain made the pine windbreak dark and heavy. He couldn’t hear the waves at all. There was no wind, just the rain falling straight down from the sky.”
Unlike hundreds of other writers and scholars, Pinker does correctly attribute (the oft-misattributed phrase) “Murder your darlings” to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch found in On the Art of Writing.
“The pianist could speak with both the quickstep of the city and the balladry of the countryside, he was a one-man Book of Songs and Book of History.”
“You are the creator of reality, and yet you have no idea how you do it—the process is effortless… In ancient India, the Vedic sages declared Aham Brahmasmi, which can be translated as ‘I am the Universe’ or ‘I am everything.’ They arrived at this knowledge by diving deep into their own awareness.”
“The painting that had impressed them, entitled Say Hello to My Little Friend, was an acrylic rendering of a marmoset doing cocaine.”
“HBS smacks of an ivory tower, cut off from the world outside.”
30 Principles to Live By
1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want
4. Become genuinely interested in other people
5. Smile
“On some subjects—for instance, writers’ workshops—one is tempted to pull punches or rest satisfied with oversimplified answers; but I’m assuming, as the primary reader of this book, an intensely serious beginning novelist who wants the strict truth (as I perceive it) for his life’s sake, so that he can plan his days of technique, theory, and attitude; and become as quickly and efficiently as possible a master of his craft” (p xxii).
