"Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place. "
"Today’s tangents
will become tomorrow’s arcs,
and unforeseen connections
will tie up your loose ends in a way
that will make you want to slap your head and
holler at your accidental
brilliance."
- Chris Baty
"The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.
I say trick but what i really mean is challenge, because it's a very hard thing to do.
Our instinct as humans, after all, is to assume that most things are not interesting.
We flip through the channels on the television and reject ten before we settle on one.
We go to a bookstore and look a twenty novels before we pick the one we want.
We filter and rank and judge.
We have to. There's just so much out there.
But if you want to be a writer [or insert your aspiration], you have to fight that instinct every day.
Shampoo doesn't seem interesting?
Well, dammit, it must be, and if it isn't, I have to believe that it will ultimately lead me to something that is."
- from What The Dog Saw and other adventures, Preface, p xiii, by Malcolm Gladwell