Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.

Say what you have to say, and then stop.

A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to possibly forestall them.

Abstract ideas are the patterns two or more memories have in common.

I say, don't read the classics - try to discover your own classics; every life has its own.

She can't help it, ' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.

...the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.

Our imperfections make us unique as surely as our strengths.

We never find what we set out hearts on. We ought to be glad of that.

My compulsion is to create things.

In our democracy, near equality is no equality. Government either treats everyone the same, or it doesn't. And right now it doesn't.

The worst job I ever had was as a forensicologist for the United Nations. One time I thought I'd come across the mass grave of a thousand snowmen, but it turns out it was just a field of carrots.

We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year.

Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.

It's ok to say, 'this is what I want' and go after it.