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I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.

—Woody Allen

… data has now replaced God in the Far American West. We worship it and fear its revelations. All that matters is how much something is: how much it’s used, how much it’s viewed, how much it costs, how much it pays, how much it grows, how much it shrinks, how much it is returned to again, how much it is abandoned.

—Mat Honan’s profile of Stewart Butterfield

“There is no separate digital world. Software acts on the world around us. Software acts in the world with us. It is material to be designed with. Make it evident. Make it beautiful.” 

Matt Jones

Lines, circles, letters, characters.
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.

— Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

When you’re thinking of a new idea, ask yourself if it’s something the Italian everyman could understand.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “You know those old Italian men who gather on Sundays in Piazza Signori in Treviso, wearing their top hats and suits? If you can go up to one of those men and, in your bad Italian, communicate your idea—and if he can understand your idea, respond to it, and think it’s interesting—then you’ve almost certainly hit on something strong and universal. If you can’t do that, then you may have hit on something strong and universal, but your chances are a little bit lower.

— Jonathan Harris on The Great Discontent (TGD)

“Make machines the slaves instead of the masters of men”

I think a novel is never worth writing unless it’s answering an important question for the person writing it.

—@harikunzru