{% blockquote -Douglas Adams, Letter to David Vogel, April 14, 1999 http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/we-both-share-same-goal.html Letters of Note %} We seem to have gotten to a place where the problems appear to loom larger than the opportunities. I don’t know if I’m right in thinking this, but I only have silence to go on, which is always a poor source of information. It seems to me that we can either slip into the traditional stereotypes — you’re the studio executive who has a million real-world problems to worry about, and I’m the writer who only cares about seeing his vision realised and hang the cost and consequences — or we can recognise that we both share the same goal, which is to make the most successful movie we possibly can. The fact that we may have different perspectives on how this can best be achieved should be a fertile source of debate and iterative problem solving. It’s not clear to me that a one-way traffic of written “notes” interspersed with long, dreadful silences is a good substitute for this. {% endblockquote %}

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors. He had a way of saying just what was needed and nothing more. This letter only confirms my adoration of his style.

Bonus: he concludes with an exhaustive list of how to reach him, including restaurants and a supermarket he might be at. Classic.