Jia Tolentino
Writer
As a writer, the only thing that you can guarantee yourself pleasure and challenge from is inside your own writing process.
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Question
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Daily life
Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.
The Guardian Review, 20 February 2010 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 82 →
Marvin Minsky
Cognitive scientist; co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
So any student who wants to get into psychology, right now the students are like lemmings. They say, “Well, it’s popular to study brain science, I’ll do that.” Or, “It’s popular to do neural networks; I see 30,000 people doing it, it must be good.” And my advice is if a lot of people are doing it, don’t waste your time.
Brian Chesky
Co-founder and chief executive of Airbnb
Getting rich slow isn't actually slower. It's slower in year one, but it might be faster in year seven.
Recorded
Chesky's remarks to Fortune in 2017, quoted by Business Insider, Business Insider (Markets Insider), August 2020
source ↗
Margaret Thatcher
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1979–1990; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975–1990; MP for Finchley 1959–1992
You never follow the crowd. You work things out for yourself. And therefore if you think differently from the crowd, you must put your own view and try to get people taking your line. But you never follow the crowd. You never do things just because other people are doing them.
Recorded
Chris Ogden, Time magazine, No. 10 Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, from Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre), 16 January 1989
source ↗
More from Richard Ford
View profile →Don’t read your reviews. […] Don’t write reviews. (Your judgment’s always tainted.) […] Don’t write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)
More on time & hindsight
- When were you happiest? 581 answers
- What is the most important lesson life has taught you? 141 answers
- What scares you about getting older? 63 answers
- What is the best advice you have ever received? 31 answers
- If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why? 24 answers
- What is something you were told by a parent, teacher, or mentor that you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
Also answered this
Nora Ephron, Jenny Diski, Annie Proulx, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jia Tolentino, Amy Tan
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All time & hindsight questions
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject