2009-05-29
(綜合報道)(星島日報報道)日本名作家村上春樹時隔五年推出的新作《1Q84》，周三在東京市中心搶先發售，今日則正式在全國推出。此書由於預訂情況異常踴躍，未面世就先轟動，出版社宣布第一版加印十萬本。在東京發售時，書迷更大排長龍搶購。
六十歲的村上春樹的長篇小說《1Q84》共分兩冊。負責出版的新潮社原定第一冊初版發行二十萬本，第二冊發行十八萬本，但由於預訂讀者甚眾，在發售前宣布各加印五萬本。
在日本出版界，發售前追加印刷是極為特殊的事。一本書初版就發行二十萬本，也創下新潮社的單行本初版發行數的第二高紀錄。村上的新作，周三下午起在東京都中心區的大型書店開始出售後，書迷紛紛搶購。東京都新宿區的紀伊國屋書店稱，中午入貨後，一放上架就「賣得像飛一樣」。日本其他地區將從周五起全面發售。
村上對這次推出的新小說內容事前完全保密，只公開書名及每冊售價是一千八百九十日圓（約一百五十港元）。村上本來就有很多書迷，這種極為特殊的市場推廣手法，據說有助提高讀者對這位日本著名作家新作的好奇感。
四十五歲的東京居民佐藤道代是村上的忠實書迷，他已買了村上的新作，談到村上不公開新作的內容，他說︰「我一點也不介意。我已等了他的新作很久，他的著作充滿人情味和智慧。」《1Q84》與村上之前的很多著作相似，講述一個複雜和超現實的故事。故事在一男一女兩位主人翁之間穿插，兩位主角正互相尋覓對方。作者通過兩位主角的思想和經歷，包括謀殺和歷史事件，探索社會和情緒問題，例如異端宗教、暴力、家中人際關係和愛情。
村上出生於京都府，畢業於早稻田大學文學部演劇科，寫小說，翻譯美國文學，也從事散文創作。他經營過爵士咖啡館，一九七九年憑《聽風的歌》贏得群像新人文學獎而踏上文壇。他在一九八七年發表的《挪威的森林》成為暢銷書，上下兩冊銷路共達四百三十萬本，掀起「村上春樹旋風」，主要作品還包括《海邊的卡夫卡》等。
二○○六年，村上以對世界文學的貢獻獲頒「法蘭茲．卡夫卡獎」，他拿過的獎項還包括谷崎潤一郎獎和讀賣文學獎等。村上在國外的知名度也很高，被視為是有機會奪諾貝爾文學獎的日本作家。
http://news.sina.com.hk/cgi-bin/nw/show.cgi/12/1/1/1149940/1.html
Friday, May 29, 2009
「傻瓜」總統活在人民心中
2009-05-29
【明報專訊】儘管盧武鉉自殺前捲入貪污醜聞、調查結果未明，但不少韓國人似乎都對他一死以示清白動容，尤其是他們向來視檢察人員為權貴爪牙、手段嚴苛。他們對權力集團的厭惡情緒，遂通過一位清廉親民形象深入民心的過世總統身上，放射出來。盧武鉉綽號「傻瓜」，皆因不少支持者認為，由他1980年代初起放棄掙錢機會當上人權律師，到成為首名「沒有執政黨」、推動「人民參與政府」的總統，為政為民不為己，與絕大多數政客迥異，「傻得厲害」。
理想主義政客 力除積弊
盧武鉉因決心為軍政府治下參與民運而遭起訴的學生打官司，落得兩袖清風，卻以人權律師被稱頌，於1988年當選國會議員。稍後，領導「統一民主黨」的反對派領袖金泳三，為爭取大選勝算，決與軍人出身的盧泰愚總統的執政黨合併。當許多政客顧及政治前途而贊成，盧卻以背棄民主、利益輸送為由，極力反對兼退黨，其高風亮節自此深入民心，贏得「傻瓜」之名。盧武鉉之傻，還在於他常出於理想主義，不按政治生態牌理出章。地域主義在韓國根深柢固，但他卻「妄想」將之打破，以致1992年國會選舉、1995年市長選舉、2000年國會選舉，都因他放棄了原來的「根據地」參選而敗北。
「身後方知他為黎民付出努力」
2002年他在年輕選民力撐下當選總統，繼續與既得利益集團和政治惡習對抗，圖謀打破權威主義、地域主義，惟也因此招來圍攻。面對反對派大國家黨主導國會的先天掣肘，加上他甫上任便退出執政黨，沒有政治勢力支持，其教育和經濟等政策都告失敗，惹來民怨。被指受政商大集團支配的韓國三大全國傳媒，也涉嫌「公器私用」，大肆炮製盧武鉉政權的負面新聞，令他任內四面楚歌。諷刺的是，盧武鉉下台後，受擁護程度反而日漲，更勝任內，似乎顯示了政敵攻擊消減後，其勇於挑戰政治積弊的理想主義精神，又再獲認同。「我其實對政治毫不關心……盧武鉉執政時，以為他只是一個平庸的韓國總統，到他身後，方知道他為黎民施政付出了多大的努力，很多從前不知道的事，現在才知道。作為韓國的總統，我國人民的盧武鉉，他將永存人民的心坎裏。」網民newl在一個悼念盧武鉉網站裏寫下的這番悼念辭，或許正好解釋為何一名捲入貪污調查的總統，身後竟觸發萬民悲痛和讚頌。撰文﹕何麗玲
Thursday, May 14, 2009
林奕華 Vs 黎堅惠三八最愛女主角
林奕華 Vs 黎堅惠三八最愛女主角
08/03/2006文： Venus 攝：Kuen
三八婦女節，與其說是爭取男女平等，提倡女性獨立，不如說是肯定女性的能力。常說女人八面玲瓏、飄忽不定，是褒也是貶，要看女人有多厲害。這一次，我們不看世界上有多少位女富豪、女CEO，我們找來林奕華及黎堅惠一起走進電影世界，看看在千變萬化的女主角中，找到多少你我的夢想。
黎堅惠從電影女角身上找到Role Model；林奕華說女人戲是他的強心針，最佳女主角，不止是頒獎台上的那位。原來女人戲不一定為女人而設，女人投入角色，幻想成為當中女主角，男人卻從第三者角度去欣賞。黎堅惠愛看舊荷里活、法國電影，原來不少是她的學習對象。去年出了一本《女人篇》的林奕華，看電影女主角，卻比看男人戲得到更多力量，他們不約而同地說，女人的武器，不只是來自外貌，女人的強，原來高深莫測。
喜劇賜我力量黎堅惠揀選的幾齣電影，像《律政可人兒》（Legally Blonde）、《靈感女神》（The Muse）和《魔女搵老襯》（Bedazzled）都是喜劇。
黎：「當中的女主角表面上都是令男人垂涎的女人，但其實都是有樣有腦兼有計，她們不但運用自己的Sexual Power，可以說是用盡自己所有優勢，令我看得眉飛色舞。表面上看來是一種模樣，內卻不止如此，能做到所謂的『棉針』，就令我很羨慕。」
林：「傳統上女人都是不用站出來說話，不需要有態度、有立場，因此令人沒有防之心。」
黎：「其實這三齣喜劇的角色都是關於Power，表面上好似很不認真，但就是像四撥千斤般把所有難 題解決，這正是自己需要學習的地方，我會時常翻看 這幾齣戲，像《律政可人兒》就看了不下三十次。」
知性與成長至於林奕華則選擇一些與知性有關的電影：「像《Annie Hall》中的Diane Keaton，她喜歡Woody Allen，就是被他知性一面吸引，令她發笑，時常覺得女人不懂得令自己笑，所以男朋友有沒有幽默感是很重要，能把陰天變成晴天。《Annie Hall》絕對是愛情經典，少有的更是曉我們幽默地對待愛情。經常令我感興趣的是女人的勇氣，當中常涉及成長問題。張艾嘉在《海灘的一天》生於典型的父權家庭，十多歲便跟人私奔，後來丈夫事業有成，有了外遇，只是給她金飾，她變成了失落的家庭主婦，這種成長是隨波逐流。章子怡在《臥虎藏龍》中的成長卻是一種叛逆，她本身也是貴族，有錢有地位，卻希望用自己的實力證明自己，她要揚名立萬，在中國電影中很少看見女性的叛逆，而更有趣的是角色是關於成長，剛巧那時的章子怡也正在成長中。」
身份認同黎：「也就是因為她們能成為我的Role Model，Bette Davis在《All About Eve》中有齊所有女性希望擁有的東西，她面對的是一個比她年輕的女孩如何模仿及逐漸要取締她，當中說了很多女人的脆弱，吸引的是她如何面對逆境，被人搶男朋友、放暗箭，不是報復，而是取回自己的尊嚴。」
林：「她的角色就是一方面尖酸刻薄，伶牙俐齒；但另一方面卻是接受命運的安排……說到Role Model，對我來說其實是從這些電影中吸取力量，像Susan Sarandon在《Lorenzo's Oil》中，為了患上絕症的兒子而訪尋名醫，最後卻是靠自己發明的藥而救回孩子，也可以說我也代入角色，希望成為這個母親，但是她憑愛和信念而把困難解決，這力量對我來說是一支強心針，而且很多時候在女性電影中才找到這些力量。
女人面對的問題都是內在、關於自我的，而男人則是解決外在的問題，好像我不會認為《盜墓者羅拉》中的羅拉是女性，她只是穿了女服的無性人。借助女人如何面對自己內心的困難，也替我打開內心的一些疑惑。
http://the-sun.on.cc/channels/fea/20060308/20060307220825_0000.html
08/03/2006文： Venus 攝：Kuen
三八婦女節，與其說是爭取男女平等，提倡女性獨立，不如說是肯定女性的能力。常說女人八面玲瓏、飄忽不定，是褒也是貶，要看女人有多厲害。這一次，我們不看世界上有多少位女富豪、女CEO，我們找來林奕華及黎堅惠一起走進電影世界，看看在千變萬化的女主角中，找到多少你我的夢想。
黎堅惠從電影女角身上找到Role Model；林奕華說女人戲是他的強心針，最佳女主角，不止是頒獎台上的那位。原來女人戲不一定為女人而設，女人投入角色，幻想成為當中女主角，男人卻從第三者角度去欣賞。黎堅惠愛看舊荷里活、法國電影，原來不少是她的學習對象。去年出了一本《女人篇》的林奕華，看電影女主角，卻比看男人戲得到更多力量，他們不約而同地說，女人的武器，不只是來自外貌，女人的強，原來高深莫測。
喜劇賜我力量黎堅惠揀選的幾齣電影，像《律政可人兒》（Legally Blonde）、《靈感女神》（The Muse）和《魔女搵老襯》（Bedazzled）都是喜劇。
黎：「當中的女主角表面上都是令男人垂涎的女人，但其實都是有樣有腦兼有計，她們不但運用自己的Sexual Power，可以說是用盡自己所有優勢，令我看得眉飛色舞。表面上看來是一種模樣，內卻不止如此，能做到所謂的『棉針』，就令我很羨慕。」
林：「傳統上女人都是不用站出來說話，不需要有態度、有立場，因此令人沒有防之心。」
黎：「其實這三齣喜劇的角色都是關於Power，表面上好似很不認真，但就是像四撥千斤般把所有難 題解決，這正是自己需要學習的地方，我會時常翻看 這幾齣戲，像《律政可人兒》就看了不下三十次。」
知性與成長至於林奕華則選擇一些與知性有關的電影：「像《Annie Hall》中的Diane Keaton，她喜歡Woody Allen，就是被他知性一面吸引，令她發笑，時常覺得女人不懂得令自己笑，所以男朋友有沒有幽默感是很重要，能把陰天變成晴天。《Annie Hall》絕對是愛情經典，少有的更是曉我們幽默地對待愛情。經常令我感興趣的是女人的勇氣，當中常涉及成長問題。張艾嘉在《海灘的一天》生於典型的父權家庭，十多歲便跟人私奔，後來丈夫事業有成，有了外遇，只是給她金飾，她變成了失落的家庭主婦，這種成長是隨波逐流。章子怡在《臥虎藏龍》中的成長卻是一種叛逆，她本身也是貴族，有錢有地位，卻希望用自己的實力證明自己，她要揚名立萬，在中國電影中很少看見女性的叛逆，而更有趣的是角色是關於成長，剛巧那時的章子怡也正在成長中。」
身份認同黎：「也就是因為她們能成為我的Role Model，Bette Davis在《All About Eve》中有齊所有女性希望擁有的東西，她面對的是一個比她年輕的女孩如何模仿及逐漸要取締她，當中說了很多女人的脆弱，吸引的是她如何面對逆境，被人搶男朋友、放暗箭，不是報復，而是取回自己的尊嚴。」
林：「她的角色就是一方面尖酸刻薄，伶牙俐齒；但另一方面卻是接受命運的安排……說到Role Model，對我來說其實是從這些電影中吸取力量，像Susan Sarandon在《Lorenzo's Oil》中，為了患上絕症的兒子而訪尋名醫，最後卻是靠自己發明的藥而救回孩子，也可以說我也代入角色，希望成為這個母親，但是她憑愛和信念而把困難解決，這力量對我來說是一支強心針，而且很多時候在女性電影中才找到這些力量。
女人面對的問題都是內在、關於自我的，而男人則是解決外在的問題，好像我不會認為《盜墓者羅拉》中的羅拉是女性，她只是穿了女服的無性人。借助女人如何面對自己內心的困難，也替我打開內心的一些疑惑。
http://the-sun.on.cc/channels/fea/20060308/20060307220825_0000.html
Monday, March 16, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
1. Without self-renewal, culture dies.
2. In good or bad times, style remains an optimistic, never-say-die form of self expression
3. She understands this intuitively,......
4. Color blocking is easy. It breaks up the silhouette and lets your highlight certain parts of the body.It's graphic approach. Simple, but high impact.
5. Ochre and aqua, amethyst and turquoise, tangerine and rose……Vivid mix-and-match brights gives day wear a bold new dynamism.
2. In good or bad times, style remains an optimistic, never-say-die form of self expression
3. She understands this intuitively,......
4. Color blocking is easy. It breaks up the silhouette and lets your highlight certain parts of the body.It's graphic approach. Simple, but high impact.
5. Ochre and aqua, amethyst and turquoise, tangerine and rose……Vivid mix-and-match brights gives day wear a bold new dynamism.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it lead you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully, I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it lead you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully, I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
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