I am a huge fan of Alan Furst. Furst is the best in the business--the most talented espionage novelist of our generation.
I really feel like I'm a liberal because I'm a Catholic, because I took the words of the New Testament to heart.
Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.
I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that this is not a dress rehersal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
Not writing at all leads to nothing.
Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around.
When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
I don't know what my fans are going to think. It's definitely not what they're used to from me.
The first generation of school reformers I talk about - nineteenth century education reformer Horace Mann, Catharine Beecher - they are true believers in their vision for public education. They have a missionary zeal. And this to me connects them a lot to folks today, whether it's education activist Campbell Brown or former D. C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. It's a righteous sense, a reform push that's driven by a strong belief in a particular set of solutions.
Some people perceive Skinner to be complex. I just basically was trying to remember my lines, so I guess that's what they perceive as being complexity.
And I guess that in some way I'm falling for you because you are who you are. It's easy to sleep with you because there's no bullshit and you make me feel safe. But this all started because I gave in to a crazy impulse. It doesn't happen very often, and I hadn't planned it.