Random Discovery Quotes

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

Sometimes a serendipitous reaction occurs when a network asks you if you have any ideas for a series, at a time when your creative flow is working in that direction.

I believe aphorisms are best when first read in the wild, free from the confines of any categories.

Every once in a while, I find something that I'm interested in just because of the singing, like the Goo Goo Dolls.

I first came across Chadron, Nebraska, by accident in 1994.

Gone are the days of discovering a new musical artist on a listening station at Tower Records; the days of going to the Mom and Pop video store on a Friday night with the kids and simply browsing for a good movie is all but gone, too. Browsing culture afforded the opportunity for discovery. It was an act of fun regardless of a consumerist outcome.

With Netflix, I browse; I watch documentaries about things I'd never dream of, but I think, 'I might as well.'

I got one entire song from fortune cookies (Land of Sunshine). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it.

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

The thing about New York is you can leave your house without a plan and find the day. You can't do that in Los Angeles. You need to get in your car, all this, you can't just drive around like a lunatic. In New York, you can literally walk outside, and wind up anywhere.

Sometimes I will click on a random sequence of notes- not to actually use it in a song, but to see if I can find maybe a simple pattern that I can build off of.

How do you find a buried city in a vast landscape? Finding it randomly would be the equivalent of locating a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, wearing baseball mitts.

Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you're just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love.

Engineering serendipity is this idea that we can help people come across unexpected but helpful connections at a better than random rate. And in some ways it's based on trying to reassess this notion of serendipitous as lucky - to think of serendipitous as smart.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

I used to take 'Visions of Cody' by Jack Kerouac on tour all the time. I don't really love Kerouac, but that book, you could just open at any page and find something incredible for that day.

Unfortunately, my system for tracking down funny female writers isn't methodical. It's mainly based on word-of-mouth, which can cast a limited net.

There are people who want to hear what they consider your hits. There are people who want you to experiment and explore random, rare things. And it's kind of a different; they're two different beasts.

I was extremely frustrated, almost at the point of giving up on coming up with a name for the project (because I'm awful at it), when I decided to play the 'put a pen somewhere on a map with your eyes closed' game with South Africa. About the 5th try was St. Lucia in South Africa, which coincidentally also happens to be an idyllic sub-tropical seaside resort town. The name seemed to fit with the mood of the music, and so after a while it just stuck.

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.

I don't like to look for anything in particular.