Éric Weiner > Quotes

“We are at our most creative when we have something to push against. Creativity does not require perfect conditions. In fact, it thrives in imperfect ones. The block of marble from which Michelangelo carved his masterpiece, the David, had been discarded by other artists. They considered it defective, and they were right. But Michelangelo saw that defect as a challenge, not a disqualifier.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Maybe that is the best definition of a work of genius: something that renders silly and futile any thought of an upgrade.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“The ghosts of Michelangelo and Leonardo and Botticelli and all the rest hang in the air, like San Francisco fog. You'd think it would have burned off by now, five hundred years later, but it hasn't. The half-life of true genius is inexhaustible.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“A remarkably large number of Renaissance artists were illegitimate, including Alberti and Ghiberti. For them, as for Leonardo, this was both a curse and a blessing. Had he been born "legitimately," Leonardo would likely have followed in his father's footsteps and become a notary or a lawyer. But those professions' guilds refused entry to illegitimate children. Leonardo couldn't become a doctor or a pharmacist, nor could he attend university. By age thirteen, most doors were already closed to him.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“We only hire applicants for jobs once we've determined they are a perfect fit. We only assign tasks to those who have already demonstrated they can perform that same exact task. We treat risk not as a noble venture, a dance with the universe, but as something to be avoided at all costs, or at least reduced to a decimal point. And we wonder why we're not living in another renaissance?”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Michelangelo was the world's first tortured artist. "My delight is in melancholy," he said, a statement that would later become the unofficial rallying cry for countless generations of sullen artists dressed entirely in black.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“The comedian toys with our rational minds and brings about a "momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices." The punch line comes a surprise but makes perfect sense. The sudden click of logic makes a joke funny; humor is reasonable. Someone without a strongly developed sense of logic is unlikely to have a good sense of humor either.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“All art is, at its core, a stab at immortality. We like to believe that geniuses, bu dint of their creations, escape death. They do not. Every life, no matter how well and richly lived, is sadly incomplete. Even Leonardo's. Even Michelangelo's, And, certainly, my friend Eugene's.
Genius offers only the illusion of immortality. Yet we reach for it anyway, the way a drowning man will reach for even the flimsiest of logs.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“In other words, where we are is vital to who we are.”
― Éric Weiner