“I always just want to move along to the next step.”

I want Pinterest to be human. The Internet’s still so abstract… To me, boards are a very human way of looking at the world.

Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give ~ with a few exceptions ~ generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.

I used to wake up and look at our analytics and think, “What if yesterday was the last day anyone used Pinterest?” Like, everyone collectively decided, “We’re done!” Over time I got more confidence.

The companies that I really admire the most are the ones that have a deep visceral understanding of why people use their service, and they figure out ways of making money that are completely consistent with how people are feeling and what they are doing at the time.

Just build things and find out if they work.

I’d never managed anyone before, so I don’t have a lot of experience. But I’m lucky – I have a lot of team members who have a really honest relationship with me.

You think you’re going to Toledo but you’re actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren’t driving well

As a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It’s cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I’m not one of those people.

People say doing a startup is like a marathon. It’s actually a roadtrip at night with no headlights.

I use Pinterest for everything. Book collections, trips, hobbies. It’s all there. I planned my wedding on it. When I had a kid, I planned all his stuff on it. So it was nice to discover that I wasn’t the only one.

I kind of think of engineering like the chefs at a restaurant. Nobody’s going to deny chefs are integrally important, but there’s also so many other people who contribute to a great meal.

When Pinterest works well, it helps you find things that are meaningful to you. We want to build a system that helps you do that.

We want the average person to use it and think that it makes the experience of using Pinterest better.

I was obsessed with this idea that these things that you collect, they just say so much about who you are. I can’t say it came from hard-nosed business analysis… It was just something I really want to see built.

Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work.

Don’t take too much advice.

We need to move beyond the demonisation of overpaid traders

Moving away from “useful” doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

We have a responsibility to first understand how climate change impacts all peoples of the world. Then, we must consider the individual and collective choices and actions that can move us toward a sustainable future.

I tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.

Precise, graceful, and generous, the poems in SuperLoop, seem to be born out of a deep, careful attention and a profound compassion.

Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional.

The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who knew where I was, was caught for some reason, I should move.

I’ve made it a policy to move every five years, either physically or in my research.