David Perell

Great Writing Finds Detail, Empathy, and Real Problem‑Solving

My favorite quotes from this interview with Wright Thompson: - Profiles are about figuring out what is a central complication of somebody's life and how, on a daily basis, they go about solving it. - “A great detail will do the work of 50 crappy sentences.” - “In most brainstorming sessions, the goal for the individuals is to look good, not to make the thing good.” - "Stories are like a prayer for empathy, to try to understand each other, to understand another human being a little bit at a time. Then slowly, thread by thread, you understand yourself." - On writing well: "One of the things that's missing is that nobody wants to hear what I have to say, which is just reps. Zen is a butt in a seat. There's no mystery. It's just reps." - "When somebody says something is overwritten, it really just means that the story is underreported." - "I wish someone had told me years ago that if you're going to be a professional writer for decades, writing is not going to be about words, but it's going to be about architecture. Only when you really understand how things fit together and move can you then actually be thinking about the words." - "All writing is trying to say something new that is true and is both specific and universal and that helps the reader understand something they didn't understand before, preferably about themselves."