“Taste is the ability to infuse a product with emotion. In a taste-based industry, its products are stripped down to their very core: how it makes its users feel. We see this phenomenon happen in books, music, movies, games and increasingly tech products

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it

Film geeks don’t have a whole lot of tangible things to show for their passion and commitment to film. They just watch movies all the time. What they do have to show is a high regard for their own opinion. They’ve learned to break down a movie. They understand what they like and don’t like about a film. And they feel that they’re right. It’s not open to discussion. When I got involved in the movie industry I was shocked at how little faith or trust people have in their own opinions. They read a script and they like it – then they hand it to three of their friends to see what they think about it. I couldn’t believe it.

Rick Rubin on trusting your own taste: “You can’t second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like…Do what’s personal to you, take it as far you can go and people will resonate with it if they are supposed to resonate with it.”

I never had an arts education. I can barely draw straight lines. What I do have is a love for words, the history and delightful orgy of words, and a constant sense of discomfort about how things are hardly ever the way they should be.

I’m thinking now about how school encourages students to bullshit. I have friends who are literature teachers who constantly get frustrated by how their smart students give them stupid but vaguely plausible answers – I remember what it was like to be such a student. The student isn’t interested in being honest about his feelings – he just wants to be done with his homework and go on to play.