“I’d get an idea and wouldn’t know how to make it work, and she’d figure out how to make it work.”
Pete Seeger
more infosource: describing his wife, in “Toshi Seeger, Wife of Folk-Singing Legend, Dies at 91,” by Douglas Martin, New York Times, July 11, 2013.
category: collaboration, love, marriage, partnership
medium: Obituary
“Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces—what Dr. Seuss calls ‘the waiting place.’ Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference—the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals—but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.”
Bruce Mau
more infosource: “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth” (1998), more here
category: collaboration, creative process, empty space, growth
medium: Manifesto
“It was you that broke the new wood
Now is the time for carving.”
Ezra Pound
more infosource: “A Pact,” in Ezra Pound: Early Writings, ed. by Ira B. Nadel (New York: Penguin, 2005).
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category: collaboration, creative process, influence, wood
medium: Poetry
“They say that I have no hits and I’m difficult to work with, and they say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Tom Waits
more infosource: Induction speech, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, originally broadcast on Fuse TV, March 20, 2011.
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category: collaboration, music, success
medium: Speech
“The only screenplays that aren’t tampered with are the ones that aren’t made. Making a movie is an ensemble act. Writers are not authors out there. And scripts are not books. They’re blueprints. You work with others or you’re gone.”
Richard Price
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 398.
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category: blueprint, collaboration, ensemble, film, movie, screenplay, writing
medium: interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 138 of The Paris Review, 1996.
“Collaboration is the buzzword of the new millennium.”
Twyla Tharp
more infosource: The Collaborative Habit, with Jesse Kornbluth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 7.
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category: buzzword, collaboration, millennium, trend
medium: nonfiction
“Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.”
Atul Gawande
more infosource: The Checklist Manifesto (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 67.
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category: collaboration, fallible, humanity, imperfect
medium: nonfiction
“The sooner you establish a routine, the more smoothly your collaboration will advance.”
Twyla Tharp
more infosource: The Collaborative Habit, written with Jesse Kornbluth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 26.
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category: collaboration, routine, success
medium: nonfiction
“People are people. And people are problems. But—and this is a very big but—people who are practiced in collaboration will do better than those who insist on their individuality.”
Twyla Tharp
more infosource: The Collaborative Habit, written with Jesse Kornbluth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 11.
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category: collaboration, cooperation, flexibility, success, work
medium: nonfiction
collaboration