Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
Sometimes I will make CliffsNotes of my CliffsNotes.
People tend to simplify things.
I think that one of Tim's great qualities and abilities is in what seems like a thumbnail sketch to get something quite telling, very simply, when you're doing it or being in that thumbnail sketch, you don't feel that it's important.
Whenever you're adapting something that's a 12- or 14-hour read down to something that has to be around two hours, there's going to be some cuts.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
I just butcher a book. Everything I underline I assume is important to me.
I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.
A man, groundly learned already, may take much profit himself in using by epitome to draw other men’s works, for his own memory sake, into short room.
I love songs because by nature they are concise; they sum up. I try to use as few words as possible. It's usually funnier that way, anyway.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
