“What makes creative people tingle are interesting problems, the chance...” — Alex Steffen Quote

What makes creative people tingle are interesting problems, the chance to impress their friends, and caffeine.

In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution.

You don't change the world by hiding in the woods, wearing a hair shirt, or buying indulgences in the form of 'Save the Earth' bumper stickers. You do it by articulating a vision for the future and pursuing it with all the ingenuity humanity can muster.

The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.

I think even back as far as 'Lord of the Rings,' there was always the chance that 'The Hobbit' would be made, even way back then. Of course at that point, Peter Jackson didn't probably think at that point that he'd be directing it.

The more I come to know about the outside world's perception of China, the more I feel there are all sorts of misunderstandings, and to a certain extent, people do not get the full picture from the media. A lot of foreigners have few opportunities to visit China, and a lot of Chinese people do not have the chance to go to Europe or to the West.

I felt that I didn't get a fair chance at Texas Tech to compete, for an assortment of reasons, but reasons I couldn't really control.

You can lay in bed and think you don't stand a chance, that's what all of us thought, and here we are. We ended up doing all right.