Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Writing
Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.
Most people write so they can remember things; I write so I can forget.
You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.
It is the same with language. Language is largely made to show-off, gossip, confuse people, delude them, charm them, seduce them, scare them, exploit them, etc. And, as a side effect, convey information. Just a side effect, you fools.
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor, but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.
Beauty is enhanced by unashamed irregularities; magnificence by a facade of blunder.
To me fiction is not about ideas. It is above ideas. I make a divide between the holy, the sacred, the mysterious, the unexplainable, the implicit, the aesthetic, the moral, and the ethical on one hand, and the empirical, the functional, the explainable, the logical, the true, and the proven on the other. In short, the Holy and the Empirical. Literature belongs to the holy. You can do fiction, nonfiction, a mixture, who cares. Literature is above the distinction. It is sacred.