The line from psychologists is, if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet.

In the psychology of aesthetics, there is a name for the moment between the anxiety of confronting something new and the satisfying click of understanding it. It is called an 'aesthetic aha.

Posting dramatic charts or funny pictures is good and giving people smart reasons to believe what they already think is great.

The trick is learning to frame your new ideas as tweaks of old ideas, to mix a little fluency with a little disfluency—to make your audience see the familiarity behind the surprise.

Some consumers buy products not because they are ‘better” in any way, but simply because they are popular. What they’re buying is not just a product, but also a piece of popularity itself.

People have all day to talk about what makes them ordinary. It turns out that they want to share what makes them weird.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

Optimization hinders evolution.

Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.

Science is the only religion of mankind.

We are in the entertaining business, they want to get autographs, they want to take something home, whether it's a signed hat or, you know, program or whatever it might be.

I'm terrible. I'm the wrong person to talk to, I really don't know a thing.

Don't get too caught up in making money or having a job, get excited about the fact that you can design your life.

We have got to extend the hand of friendship, we have got to take the peacelines down brick by brick

When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead.

What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.