There's a balance between what you want to give the world and what it needs. If you're lucky, your work is in the middle.

It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist.

Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.

Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else--that's how you'll get ahead.

Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored -- the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.

Copying is about reverse-engineering.

Write the book you want to read