“The person we pass on the street sees our sneakers but would have a harder time inferring how much we’re spending teaching our kids to read.

“Dreams are meant to be grown out of, not fulfilled. The path to transcendance can pass through the point of fulfillment, yes. But if you’re doing things right, you won’t notice when you pass that point. You’ll be too busy chasing new dreams you came up with along the way.

“People often mistake their own shortcomings for those of society.

“The idea that some people are hard workers and some people are lazy is misleading at best. One’s work ethic is determined more by environment than any intrinsic quality.

“Goethe’s essay, “On Simple Imitation of Nature; Manner; Style,” ranked three approaches to art from the lowest to the highest:

At the bottom is mere imitation — reproducing a thesis, if you will, without any appreciation for the value of confronting its opposite. This is the level of the typical piece of pulp fiction, where the writer manipulates a mental cookie cutter the way a painter-by-the-numbers might manipulate a brush.

At the next level, which Goethe called “manner,” the artist creates a work that expresses his or her emotions. This is the level of a memoir written by a creative, angst-ridden teenager. The artist confronts the polarity between subject and object and demonstrates the courage of revealing one’s own vulnerabilities, one’s own humanity. The effort involved in so stripping yourself bare for all to see is indeed considerable.

At the highest level, which Goethe calls “style,” is the work of art that integrates the artist’s personality with the acquisition of insight about the objects that s/he is depicting.

“If you don’t build out a workflow for it, your users won’t do it.

“Adam Gilchrist is the Australian team’s hallmark of probity, but he was crucially involved in the erroneous and critical decision against Rahul Dravid on day five. I do not think Gilchrist is a hypocrite, so I think there must be a deeper malaise.

“For the last seventeen twenty-seven years, every single movie that managed to win the Oscar for best picture was also nominated for best editing.