“There s only one thing in life more dangerous than a bad idea, and that s a good one.”
“There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.”
“The lampshade on my head is for my bright ideas. I won t be able to convey them until Monday, when my curtain gets out of the dry cleaners.”
“I wonder where you got that idea from? I mean, the idea that it s feeble to change your mind once it s made up. That s a wrong idea, you know. Make up your mind about things, by all means - but if something happens to show that you are wrong, then it is feeble not to change your mind, Elizabeth. Only the strongest people have the pluck to change their minds, and say so, if they see they have been wrong in their ideas.”
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
“Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren t cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.”
“Right. So no plans at all then? Jenna frowned. Other than rocking in the fetal position for a while? Yeah, I was thinking about taking one of those showers where you huddle in the corner fully clothed and cry, Archer offered.”
“I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves - not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?”
“The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.”
“But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven t you?”
“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”
“All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.”
“No matter how valuable you are and your ideas, fools will certainly play both of you down, so exclude yourselves from the inflammatory environs of fools.”
“I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.”
“The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we ll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.”
“Some ideas are not born of logic and good sense. They are made of clouds and cobwebs. They sprout from nowhere and feed on excitement, sprinkled with adventure juice and the sweet flavor of the forbidden. The psyche moves from the realms of the ordinary and takes a delicate step towards the unknown. We know we shouldn t and that is exactly why we do.”
“I have learned that particularly clever ideas do not always stand up under close scrutiny.”