Elegant and lucid . . . a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living . . . The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety-Anne Lamott with a harder edge of moral philosophy, Seneca with a softer edge of spiritual sensitivity, E. F. Schumacher for perplexed moderns.
Maria PopovaCuration is a form of pattern recognition - pieces of information or insight which over time amount to an implicit point of view.
Maria PopovaOne of my jobs was at a start-up ad agency. They were trying to do things differently, work with socially conscious clients, and to really be a more creative take on advertising than the industry itself. But I noticed that what the guys at the office were circulating for inspiration still came from within the ad industry. I thought that was really counterintuitive - to only borrow inspiration from within your own industry.
Maria PopovaOur chronic discomfort with ambiguity - which, ironically, is critical to both our creativity and the richness of our lives - leads us to lock down safe, comfortable, familiar interpretations, even if they are only partial representations of or fully disconnected from reality.
Maria PopovaWhen I discovered PopTech and other kind of intellectualish, online portals for curiosity. Very quickly, I just got so much more out of those than from so-called "Ivy League" education that I knew it was on me to keep myself stimulated, and to keep learning, more than anything. And, because I paid my way through college, I was working at Penn, two to four jobs at a time to pay for school.
Maria Popova