My first wife said to me, ‘It’s me or the guitar,’ and I picked up my guitar and left.

—Buddy Guy.

Via QV.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

—Stephen Elop, recently-appointed Nokia CEO, in a memo posted to an internal Nokia employee system.

The things we create in print and in digital are so completely different from each other that they appeal to fundamentally distinct needs. The war between old and new is a false construct. Nothing goes away.

—David Granger, Esquire’s editor in chief.

Via APhotoEditor.

So that’s why the vast majority of everything on the internet sucks. It’s because most of the people doing it, most of the time, just haven’t put in the hours yet. And most of them never will. So only a small percentage of all the people online will ever be vaguely good at whatever it is they’re doing.

But here’s the thing: I think this is beautiful.

—Derek Powazek, Why Everything Sucks, Why That’s Awesome, and How It’s Changing Us.

How much more of this will there be? Days? Weeks?

—Wally Olins, stranded in Tokyo: The Volcano and me.

This is Wally: vital, untiring, committed.

Via @Iancul.

Who the hell thought up "interactive," I'd say — your goddam shoes are "interactive," every item of clothing you put on is "interactive," your car is "interactive," what is the big goddamn reverb on "interactive," goddamn life is "interactive"!

—James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology.

Trust nothing but your own experience.

—David Bowie in What I've Learned Esquire interview.

Via Tlön Society.

Remember way back to January 2007, when the iPhone was announced? Oh Internets, you wailed and gnashed your teeth endlessly. No 3G network? No MMS? No apps on the iPhone? No replaceable battery? Oh, your complaints were endless. You were sure that the iPhone was doomed because it didn’t meet all your requirements.

—Michael Pusateri to the those folks criticizing iPad before seeing one in his Message to the Internets regarding the iPad.

Dear Internets, remember the times when new stuff was exciting?

Oh Internets, you grew jaded and blasé.

Congratulations, Google. You’ve spent untold millions of dollars to produce another iPhone — two years late.

—Yawn, Google Introduces iPhone Clone at Wired.

"This is how it works, people. When there’s a perceived threat, you poke it with a stick. If it moves — and you’re a cash-rich company — you buy it."

Rick Aristotle Munarriz of Motley Fool on the rumored Twitter acquisition by Google.

The aptly named Quotes on Design collects design definitions.

My favorite one is and—many of you know—has been for years Papanek's one:

Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order.

So true!

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales.

Read the rest of quotes on simplicity and concision at Dangerous Intersection.

Via DF.

"The art director and I would brew a gigantic pot of coffee around 9 a.m. to help us get through the day. The pot would simmer in the coffeemaker, and through evaporation the coffee strengthened noticeably at lunchtime.

In the evening hours, the remaining coffee had turned to a black concoction with a stinging smell and tar-like taste. We endured it without flinching." Christoph Niemann about Coffee.

Sounds familiar?

Via BrandlyYours.

"We, in the media industry, are living in a period of severely disorienting change."

Traditional Publishing R.I.P. — A mournful elegy for a wonderful medium.

"It seems to me that the trick in writing trade books, articles and blog entries is to know enough that you have something to say, without knowing so much that you can completely comprehend just how unimportant what you have to say is."

Cranky Tip #45 from Dan Willis.

"A tubelog is a long, tall web page on which a person called "tubelogger" pastes a YouTube video every now and then."

Fuck Freud.

"McCain is elected and there is widespread suspicion, founded or not, that the election was rigged. That, for all practical purposes, will be end of the Republic. Citizens will take to the streets, the lame duck administration will declare martial law, half the country will stop paying taxes, and we will begin the long slide toward a Mad Max economy. "

Scott Adams.

Via Bethinkr.

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, April 30, 2007.

"If the iPod is the biggest success of the 21st century then iPhone is likely to be the biggest flop of the 21st century."

Laura Ries, self-proclaimed marketing guru and branding consultant, June 27, 2007.

Update: Mac Daily News compiled a nice list of similar "predictions".

"Talking about God makes people seem idiotic the same way ketchup makes the finest cuisine taste like fast food." Fuck Freud.

“This is Steve Jobs, you think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” Steve Jobs in a telephone call to Joe Nocera. He's fine, though.

Via DF.

"Everybody becomes so completely cynical about the election process that voter turnout drops to 2 percent (families and relatives of prospective politicians) until finally the "democratic process" is abandoned in favour of a lottery system. Everything immediately improves." Brian Eno

See the rest of the list of unthinkable futures.

"I finally realized: living life is more important than blogging about design." Khoi Vinh in his post My Time Away from Blogging.

"Notice what's special and important around me. [...] Now that I've noticed, care about it." I enjoyed Randy J. Hunt's latest article on Speak Up: Pay Attention & Give a Shit.

"Publishing is not about selling newspapers or magazines to consumers, it's about selling consumers to advertisers." Wired Magazine.

"If there’s a default color that signals acceptability and inoffensiveness, it᾿s blue." Khoi Vinh, on thirty blue icons.

“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again.” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations, on seeing 50 times more searches on Apple’s iPhone than any other mobile handset. Via DF.

"It's amazing how future Microsoft products beat current Apple products time and time again, isn't it?" The Macalope blog. Via DF.

"Uploading a movie to YouTube is the simplest thing in the world. This can be proved by observing that the kind of people who do it most are often barely sentient." Stephen Fry, Compact cameras have arrived at That Stage.

"High trees catch a lot of wind." Via DVDR.

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." Felix Ingram Via DF.

"I’ve been asked to comment on what effect I think this will have, if any, on book design as we know it. Here goes.

None." Chip Kidd about Amazon Kindle.

John Gruber: "Amazon’s Kindle is going to flop. Or at least I hope it does." Read why.

"A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep." Frederic Goudy.

"God didn't create the world in 7 days. He goofed off for 6 and then pulled and all-nighter." Unknown author, a designer probably.

Two-out-of-three genre's latest iteration I've seen: "Work, sleep or play, pick two." So true.

"Don't try to be original, just try to be good." Paul Rand. Watch the tribute video. [Via DF.]

"There are people whom I consider to have essentially atrocious music libraries, and many of them are unquestionably smarter, more successful and more cultured than me. And then there are those whose eclectic, impeccably curated music libraries I might covet; many of those people are bores or bastards." Khoi Vinh.

"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Jennifer Pariser, head of litigation for Sony BMG. Nice. I love Sony more already.

"Here’s a suggestion to every Internet executive: take a Post-It note, write “EBay wasted $3 billion on Skype” and stick it to your monitor." Saul Hansell [Via D.F.]

"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason." Hunter S. Thompson in Generation of Swine.

Homework: reflect on if/how the quote applies to your industry.