Speak in the Past Tense is not a book about grammar. It is a book about why completed language carries unusual weight in human life. Most people assume the world responds most strongly to vision,

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Most people think creativity means making something up. They imagine a person sitting alone inside the sealed chamber of the self, producing novelty from private interior resources. Under that picture, the creative person is the

Continue readingCreativity Is Not What Most People Think It Is

Some ideas visit. Others stay. That is one of the great differences in inner life, and most people feel it long before they have language for it. A thought crosses the mind and vanishes. Fine.

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Not every recurring thought is important. But recurrence is where seriousness begins. A passing thought may mean very little. It flickers, startles, irritates, flatters, or embarrasses, and then it is gone. Much of mental life

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One of the most important skills in life is learning not to bow equally to everything that passes through your mind. Most people do the opposite. They are either too impressed by thought or too

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People say strange things about thought all the time. A thought came to me.It occurred to me.It hit me.It dawned on me.I don’t know where that came from.I can’t get it out of my head.That

Continue readingWhy “It Came to Me” Is More Than a Figure of Speech

Most people have never actually watched a thought arrive. They have had millions of thoughts, of course. They have been carried by them, disturbed by them, inspired by them, exhausted by them, organized by them,

Continue readingThe Thought You Did Not Make