The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.
Good science is all about following the data as it shows up and letting yourself be proven wrong, and letting everything change while you're working on it - and I think writing is the same way.
I think uncertainty is good for things. Certainty breeds complacency and complacency means that you just sit somewhere in your nice little comfortable suburban house in Michigan, looking at CNN and saying, "Oh, those poor immigrant children that are all coming across the border. But we really can't have them here - that isn't what God wants. Let's send them all back to the drug cartels." There's a complacency to it.
Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.
It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.
Be assertive, but don't forget to look around. I realized there are other opinions that can be more useful to me than just sticking to my guns.
The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.
I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything.
