“You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

“You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

“Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”

“Nothing is original. It says it right there in the Bible. Ecclesiastes:That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of previous ideas.”

“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”

“The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career:”

“There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.”