not haunted

"Something can only haunt you if you decide to let it haunt you."
- Charlize Theron

depression

"Two prime victims of the disease are your libido and your ability to read. Five times through a paragraph and unable to say what it's about. But oddly, you can read a book or article about depression with full comprehension."
- Dick Cavett, Talk Show, p. 151

player

"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."
- Albert Einstein

Sam

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and words! His real life is lead by his head, and is known to none but himself ... His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world ... and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden — it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written ... Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written."
- Mark Twain

what is 6 Sigma?

aphorism

"I've only remembered what I've learned by myself."
- Nassim Taleb

A: Adherence to strategy.

"Q: What failures and the successful have in common."
- Guy Kawasaki reflecting upon his Apple tenure

I forget

"If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them."
- William James

fight

"Must you carry the bloody horror of combat in your heart forever?"
- Homer, The Odyssey

managers and meetings

Why the office isn't the best place to get work done:

patience and discipline

"One of the Japanese experts on quality and employee involvement likens the need for patience and discipline to that of the bamboo farmer. Once the bamboo seed is planted, the farmer must water it every day for four years before the tree breaks ground! But when it finally does, it grows 60 feet in 90 days."
- Paul Allaire, Xerox Corporation

buried and honored by five presidents

President Richard Nixon

Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

MBA

"[The Business School] was reported to be so toxic that some had been medicated for stress, anxiety and depression."
- Wade Hemsworth in the Hamilton Spectator

preferred sculpting

"Painting is suitable only for women and feeble men." A lecture on Michelangelo here.

logistics

enter the dragon

"A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard."
- Bruce Lee

snow

Alfred Sisley, Snow ay Louveciennes, 1874

on adversity

"Life will never be just a walk through an open field."
- Russian proverb

cow

Sting and Stewart Copeland in AIR Studios Montserrat, 1981. Photo: Andy Summers

"Happiness is a bovine concept. They get it. We don't"
- Sting

cowboy

"Stats are for losers."
- Dallas Cowboys owner and 3x Super Bowl Champion Jerry Jones

machinery of the universe

Dr. Bromfenbrenner

Patient shows no ambition, no get-up-and-go, no vim.

He is riding the grand loopen-ze-loop ... that goes from the height of delusional gaiety ... to the trough of despair.

He is now near, but not yet at his lowest point. When he reaches bottom, he may erupt und pose a danger to himself ... and others.

Sidney J. Mussburger

Diagnosis, Dr. Bromfenbrenner?

Dr. Bromfenbrenner

Patient is eine manic-depressive paranoid, type B ... with acute schizoid tendencies.

lunar

Neil Young only records during full moons.

250

The number of times Anthony Hopkins reads and rereads each script.

father of minimalism

Question: How by looking at it can you declare it art?

Frank Stella: It's what anybody can do. If you want to look at art you can find it.

The most expensive books

From The Economist:

ON TUESDAY December 7th a complete volume of John James Audubon's "The Birds of America" fetched a record price at auction. The book, which stands more than three feet by two feet (91cm x 61cm) and includes 435 hand-coloured illustrations of birds from North America in life-size, reached $10.3m. The previous record for a book was another copy of Audubon's masterpiece, sold in 2000, which reached $10.2m in today's prices. Indeed, a list of the ten most-expensive books would include five copies of "The Birds of America". Our chart, therefore, strips out any repeat mentions of individual titles. Many of the most expensive books are works of non-fiction, such as Redouté's illustrations of flowers, Gutenberg's Bible and the Declaration of Independence.

movies that work and don't work

"You always aim for the bull's eye, but you don't always hit it."
- Clint Eastwood

Sokolowski's

routine

"I work in a cold, dark office. No sound."
- Jonathan Franzen

on writing

A Lady Writing, 1665-66

"If you read what you wrote last year and aren't embarrassed by it then you're not making progress."
- An English teacher