It's rare for people to genuinely try to understand what others are trying to say.

There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn’t one.

Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.

For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong.

When I'm the speaker, I know that special moment [just before speaking] is the only time I will have the entire audience's full attention. Unless an alien spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I'll do starts with how I use the power of that moment.

It's only through effort that we learn what an idea actually is, and if our passion for it will last or fade. There is no shame in failure - all makers fail. But it's hard to respect someone who never tries, even once, to do something good that's always on their mind. If you're worried about how good your idea is, you're worrying about the wrong thing.

It’s not the fear of writing that blocks people, it’s fear of not writing well; something quite different.