Facebook’s leadership includes a web of …

Facebook’s leadership includes a web of people all entangled as bridesmaids, best friends, neighbors, and exes. Their fealty is seemingly to each other, their tribe, ahead of any ideology or anything else. Their pasts, presents, and futures are all deeply intertwined in a way that mine are not. They hire each other for jobs with big salaries, responsible for each other’s promotions and bonuses. A tiny enmeshed group of people increasingly responsible for shaping the attention of billions.

– from Careless People book by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I’ve realized that for some reason …

I’ve realized that for some reason, God placed the most beautiful things in life on the other side of our worst terrors. If we are not willing to stand in the face of the things that most deeply unnerve us, and then step across the invisible line into the land of dread, then we won’t get to experience the best that life has to offer.

– from Will book by Will Smith

Life is like an extremely difficult …

Life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you’re born, you’re given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can.

– from Ready Player Two book by Ernest Cline

In business, invention is often said …

In business, invention is often said to be overrated as compared with execution. Perhaps the best proof of this idea yet to be offered by the twenty-first century is the success of Facebook, a business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success. There is no lightbulb, or telephone, let alone a truly ingenious algorithm in the company’s history. And yet no firm, save Google, has harvested as much attention from the Internet, or commercialized it as effectively.

– from The Attention Merchants book by Tim Wu

Critics cannot make someone a star …

Critics cannot make someone a star. Box-office receipts cannot make someone a star. Mere excellence cannot make someone a star. What makes someone a star is when the people decide to love you en masse. When people are willing to line up at the stage door for hours after a show just to catch a glimpse – that makes you a star.

– from City of Girls book by Elizabeth Gilbert