“If I’m obsessed with anything, it’s the problem of failure. As human beings, working in medicine, you’re going to have to think about that as a surgeon. At a certain point along the way you’re going to hurt people, and trying to find that balance between harm and good is your constant struggle, and that’s the largest struggle of anyone who works in anything with moral dimensions.”

Dr. Atul Gawande – McCarthur Grant Fellow, on Charlie Rose

“It has always been an advantage to have direct contact with eminent men, if only because proof positive of their essential mediocrity spurs younger talent. So long as talent is remote from those of eminence, it droops in awe and paralysis.”

Marshall McLuhan – “Space, Time and Poetry”

“For me, success is not about accolades. It’s about fucking up on your own terms. If there are
mistakes in the
movies–and they all have mistakes–at least they’re yours, and you can learn from them.”

-Guillermo del Toro, in The Onion

“Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”

– Samuel Beckett