What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

The universal erosion of values has lead to the universal erosion of story.

The Business story is designed to trigger the listener to take an effective action. If it doesn't, the story fails.

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.