Jonathan Blow famous quotes

There are lots of random blog posters on places like Gamespot or NeoGAF or whatever who show a clearer understanding of Braid than people who are all, "I'm all about games, and narrative and meaning, and I write a blog just to tell you about how I analyze all these things." Those people have the same hit rate as your general forum poster. So that's given me a cynical response to that whole community, which is just that, "Guys, are you sure you're qualified to do this?" And that sounds asshole-ish, and mean and snarky, but that's just how I'm feeling right now.
-- Jonathan Blow

#Writing #Mean #People

Advice for playing Starseed Pilgrim: As long as you still have questions, continue.
-- Jonathan Blow

#Long #Advice #Pilgrim

You know, in college, I never got either degree, but I was a double-major in Computer Science and English. And English at Berkeley, where I went to school, is very much creatively-driven. Basically, the entire bachelor's degree in English is all about bullshitting. And Computer Science, which was my other major, was exactly the opposite of that. You had to know what you were doing, and you had to know what you were talking about.
-- Jonathan Blow

#School #College #Computer

What's interesting to me is that in terms of people who I feel are getting what my game is about - and here I'm not even talking about what the elements of the story mean, like, whatever symbolism and metaphors and things are in there. But even the structure of the game, like, there's a fundamental structure and reasons in the way things are laid out, and parts of the game that are meant to draw people's attention to certain things, regardless of what's contained in that structure. And what's interesting to me is that some people get that, and some people don't.
-- Jonathan Blow

#Mean #Interesting #People

You could make a very focused exploration game, that was about player creativity and exploration. But then it wouldn't have these very meticulous scientific kinds of puzzles in it, that Braid has. And so, it was just about picking something and understanding what it was that was chosen, and sticking to it, ruthlessly.
-- Jonathan Blow

#Creativity #Player #Understanding

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

Humility means that one should not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honored by others.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

You can't be without passion. Passion means the possessiveness to be the best.

There are a lot of people who know me who can't understand for the life of them why I would got to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew.

The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people"- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.