Quotes

But every company of the future is going to be in the business of exquisite care – which means quick turnaround time and convenience. To deliver exquisite care, you need an organization that coordinates well and listens well.

Fernando Flores

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

Anne Lamott, Time lost and found

When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg’s press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation. All of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen … it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page.

Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic, quoted in the story How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing : NPR (via obsoletethebook)

Henceforward every action will be re-echoed by many unforeseen interests on all sides; it will produce a chain of immediate events- confused reverberations in a closed space. The effect of effects, which were formerly imperceptible or negligible in relation to the length of a human life and to the radius of action of any human power, are now felt almost instantly at any distance; they return immediately to their causes, and only die away in the unpredictable. The expectations of the predictor are always disappointed, and that in a matter of months or a very few years.

Paul Valéry, 1931 (via)

The design process is based on a constant interplay of feelings and reason. The feelings, preferences, longings, and desires that emerge and demand to be given a form must be controlled by critical powers of reasoning, but it is our feelings that tell us whether abstract considerations really ring true. To a large degree, designing is based on understanding and establishing systems of order. Yet I believe that the essential substance of the architecture we seek proceeds from feeling and insight. Precious moments of intuition result from patient work. With the sudden emergence of an inner image, a new line in a drawing, the whole design changes and is newly formulated within a fraction of a second.

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture

Things rare or things beautiful, here are wisely assembled, they instruct the eye to look at all things in the world as if never seen before.

Paul Valéry, 1937.  Much to my amazement and delight, this was the opening quote in Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht.