I went straight out of high school, and when I was 17, all I wanted to do was play guitar.
Innovation is significant positive change.
For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong.
It's only through effort that we learn what an idea actually is, and if our passion for it will last or fade. There is no shame in failure - all makers fail. But it's hard to respect someone who never tries, even once, to do something good that's always on their mind. If you're worried about how good your idea is, you're worrying about the wrong thing.
If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to out the window is the notion of perfection.
It seems that bad advice that's fun will always be better known than than good advice that's dull-no matter how useless that fun advice is.
It's rare for people to genuinely try to understand what others are trying to say.
In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.
Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.
That sense of ambition, of aspiration, of moving forward, will be very important
There is an exercise I teach at colleges: Get yourself a canvas and a bunch of acrylics and go into a very dimly lighted room. Dip a brush into one of the colors, slap it on the canvas, don't look, close your eyes, make a painting, don't look, turn the lights on and see what you've got. I think this releases people from the editor in their life that's always standing over their shoulder saying, "Oh, you don't have any talent; who do you think you are?"