“In all sorts of markets—music, film, art, and politics—the future of popularity will be harder to predict as the broadcast power of radio and television democratizes and the channels of exposure grow.... The gatekeepers had their day. Now there are simply too many gates to keep.”

“When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought, to the object of their thinking.”

“It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody thinks you are wrong”

“People gravitate toward products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable--MAYA.”

“It begs for a gospel of perseverance through inevitable failure... There is no antidote to the chaos of creative markets. Only the brute doggedness to endure it.”

“This long-tail distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.”

“The mere observation that something is popular, or even that it became so rapidly, is not sufficient to establish that it spread in a manner that resembles a virus. Popularity on the internet is driven by the size of the largest broadcast. Digital blockbusters are not about a million one-to-one moments as much as they are about a few one-to-one-million moments.”

“It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody things you are wrong.”

“Quality, it seems, is a necessary, but insufficient attribute for success.”

“This sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.”

“This might be the most important question for every creator and maker in the world: how do you make something new if most people just like what they know? Is it possible to surprise with familiarity?”