A Quote by Brad Meltzer
Most archivists don't like surprises. That's why we work in the past.
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The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness, as it's called, for emotional reasons, and the main emotional reason is verisimilitude. I mean, this is what surprises people: Life is not in the simple past.
I'm not saying we are not to be held accountable. What I'm saying is that we need to appreciate past, if you don't appreciate past, you cannot understand why we are like this, why the churches and mosques are controlling our society, why Africans feel inferior. Why are our girls bleaching or make long hair? They all want to be white, Why are they not proud? Why are we not proud of name, of our clothes?
I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don't like surprises. I don't even like good surprises.
When I train, I love to take time off and fly to the Natural History Museum or an exhibition. I just love that. When you know your past, it will help you with your future… That’s why most of my friends are not fighters. Most of my friends are nerds like me. That’s why I have a hard time finding a girlfriend. I need someone to talk science with. I’m married to my work right now. But you never know. One day I could wake up and just do something different. Life is so unpredictable.
He'd written me up a proposal of why dating him was a sound decision. It had included things like "I'll give up cigarettes unless I really, really need one" and "I'll unleash romantic surprises every week, such as: an impromptu picnic, roses, or a trip to Paris—but not actually any of those things because now they're not surprises.
art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.
When I started publishing my work, one of the biggest surprises to me was the recurring question about my background and why I wasn't doing more stories about Asian-Americans.
So here are reasons why I talk to strangers: because I never know what might happen, because the world is full of surprises; because the very thing I am most worried about might turn into the thing I need most.
Most people only work enough so that it feels like work, whereas successful people work at a pace that gets such satisfying results that work is a reward. Truly successful people don’t even call it work; for them, it’s a passion. Why? Because they do enough to win!
I think in most companies you're surrounded by the past. You may have a Web site or archives or a lobby that sort of shows off your work of the past. The future is not as tangible.
Here in a nutshell is why Google continues to get hyped by everyone including me (notice who I work for). Google surprises [sic] you. Delights you. Gives you what you want (not always, but more often than the other engines).
I'm very good at delegating - people work much better when they have a real sense of responsibility. But at the same time, I don't like surprises. I don't pore over every shoot, but I do like to be aware at all times of what's going on.
When I look at my earlier work, I often wonder why I acted like that, why I wore that dress, why I said that dialogue... Why couldn't I do it better? I realized I was too young then and not confident.
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
The future is a trickster rabbit, full of surprises. Only the past is predictable. -Bobby Goodspeed
Most historians don't much like generalizations. Indeed, they make a trade of showing that this or that generalization about the past will not work here or there or then.
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