Quotes in italics appear in the book, but are attributed to someone other than the author.

"Whenever we're driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it's something physical like a chair, or more temporal or ethereal, like a poem, we're contributing something of ourselves to the world. We're taking our experience and filtering it through our words or our hands, or our voices or our bodies, and we're putting something in the culture that didn't exist before. In fact, we're not putting what we make into the culture, what we make IS the culture." (4)

"Everyone has something valuable to contribute. It is that simple. It is not, however, that easy. For, as the things we make give us power and insight, at the same time they also render us vulnerable. Our obsessions can teach us about who we are, and who we want to be, but they can also expose us. They can expose our weirdness and our insecurities, our ignorances, and our deficiencies." (4)

"I believe that to be excellent at anything you need to be at least somewhat obsessed with it." (7)

"The deepest truths about your experience are universal truths that connect each of us to each other, and to the world around us." (20)

"When you are working in a team... trying to be the hero is a terrific way to end up becoming the villain." (95)

"... the terror that comes with newness can't be your excuse for falling back into old habits or retreating to the comfort of the way you've always done things." (105)

"I'm not saying empirical knowledge and intuition replace reading. I'm saying they augment it." (156)

"No plan survives first contact with implementation" —Helmuth von Moltke (174)

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." —Isaac Newton (207)

"By facing ourselves, I mean watching and learning from our own habits and making changes based on that information to improve ourselves." (287)