Actually, I had done what I thought was more or less a finished version of The Remains of the Day , but the very buttoned-up narrator, the butler — in that earlier version, he doesn’t quite come through confessing his true emotions. He maintains his front a little bit more effectively than he does in the final version. What made me change my mind was that, between that penultimate version and the final version I handed in, I listened to a song by Tom Waits — another great singer-songwriter, remarkable artist. And this is the power of that art form: it’s performance as well as the actual writing.

It happens in the course of writing. I can’t go on if it’s not pretty much the way that it should be. Towards the beginning of a book, I will go back to page one every day and rewrite. I’ll start out the day with some marked-up pages that I have marked up the night before, and by the time you get to page, maybe, 270, you are not going back to page 1 necessarily anymore, but you’re going back to page 158 and starting over from there.

I try to force myself to go all the way through to the end. I feel like big changes at the roots are much better than lots of small changes at the branches. I definitely feel like every writer has their strengths and weaknesses, and I feel my strength is that I’m really flexible. I’m open to—not to doing anything, but to considering anything. So yeah, in this book, the protagonist, Arlo, came along fairly late. The structure totally changed. To me, it’s all about cutting and structure. I think pretty analytically. So if I can just get past the first draft, and start to think like a teacher of my own work, that’s helpful for me.

I love editing probably more than I love writing. Writing does feel in many ways like I’m making mud or making clay, material that I then, in the editing process, can shape and make into whatever I want it to be. But, until I make that mud or whatever, there’s nothing else I can make. After finishing a rough draft, I go back and start rewriting oftentimes within the draft, which is kind of a bad habit because it means that I’ll take more shortcuts. With the first novel, I started to do something that I think I’ll do forever because I love it so much, which is reading out loud. I probably read my novel out loud like six to 10 times.

In one month, two of my old prejudices were reversed. Two things that I was prejudiced against.

I don’t have any fears.

Do you have a big visionary master plan for how the world will work in twenty years? Do you have massive ambitions to revolutionize your industry? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. I never did. A year and a half after starting CD Baby, it was just me and John, my first employee, running it out of my house. One night, I decided I should think more about the long-term future of this thing. I sat with my diary for a few hours of introspection. Afterwards, I wrote John an email that went like this: “I think there’s a chance that this thing might be huge one day, so we better start preparing for that now. I mean some day, we might have a thousand artists. We might need a third employee! We’d need three computers, and need to figure out how to network them together. We might even need to start moving CDs into the garage, since eventually they might fill up the living room. Yes, I know it sounds grandiose, but I think things are headed that way.” Years later, after I had 100,000 artists and 85 employees, John would often get a good laugh out of this letter I sent him in 1999. Journalists would ask, “What’s your long-term goal?” I’d say, “I don’t have one. I surpassed my goals long ago. I’m just trying to help musicians with whatever they need today.” So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.

I love days where I just work uninterrupted from 6am to 10pm, stopping just for a little exercise. These are my favorite days, and always have been. The more of these 16-hour workdays I have, the happier I am.

20 years ago i read a brilliant book called How Buildings Learn by Stuart Brand. Again, I highly recommend this book. In fact, I think it's my most gifted book. I love this book. I've read it so many times.

The value of a coin toss is not seeing whether it lands on heads or tails. It’s noticing whether you are disappointed in the result or what you’re wishing for when it’s flipping