When I arrived at the airport I needed to have a piss so I stopped at the bathrooms and as I walked back out, in my tiny tracksuit, my giant white trainers and my bucket hat, there, walking toward me, was Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones.
Nick Cave sobre Charlie Watts (The Red Hand Files, via Daring Fireball).
When all is said and done, however, the words we use are only a small part of the equation (…)
How you say something can totally change the meaning of the words you utter. It’s the difference in intonation between ‘That’s really nice!’ (meaning thanks a million) and ‘That’s really nice!’ (meaning why did you treat me so badly?).
—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021
People who averaged only thirty hours together over nine weeks (the equivalent of just 15 minutes a day) remained acquaintances. To move from being a casual friend to a meaningful friend called for another fifty hours spent together over the course of three months, while those who advanced to be best friends took another 100 hours to be spent together. In effect, to make it into the most intimate category of friendship required something close to two hours a day to be devoted to the friend, day after day, for some considerable time. Friendship does not come cheap.
—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021
(…)
Are you ready and eager to say, “now that I know what I know, I’m going to change my course?”
Are you open and willing to say, “I didn’t know that key fact then, but I should have, and I’m building systems to make sure I will know it next time?”
Doubling down on wrong always makes things worse.
—Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog
Making friends require a great deal of effort and time. It is not something you can just magic up over a cup of coffee.
—Robin Dunbar, Friends, Little Brown, 2021