John Cleese

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating


Armando Iannucci

We let our work define us. When people say to us ‘What do you do?’ We say, ‘Oh I’m a baker,’ or ‘I’m a crash investigator.’ We never say, ‘Oh, I get in late and eat cold spring rolls in front of repeats of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a room full of carpets stained with dried-up tears. And yourself?’


Kevin Kelly

Don’t be the best. Be the only.


Rick Rubin

Art without meaning is just decoration.


Julia Cameron

Ideas, like stalactites and stalagmites, form in the dark inner cave of consciousness. They form in drips and drops, not squared-off building blocks. We must learn for an idea to hatch. Or, to use a gardening image, we must learn to not pull our ideas up by the roots to see if they are growing.


George Saunders

We have this idea of ourselves as being in control, permanent. It’s obviously not true, and we know it’s not true, but comedy is when the world lightly reminds us this is so.


David Foster Wallace

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.


Pharrell Williams

Reverse engineer a feeling and make a tangible item.