I procrastinate all morning. That's when I get my office work done and answer e-mails and see what's on the Internet and do laundry.

Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.

Thank God for my hobgoblin, small-minded consistency.

I've always subscribed to the notion that a writer always has something else to say, and the more you write, the more you have to write about, because the act of writing is self-generating.

Sometimes I think of blogging as finger exercises for a violinist; sometimes I think of it as mulching a garden. It is incredibly useful and helpful to my "real" writing.

Another benefit is that the more I blog, the more I maintain and develop a first-person voice, which translates into a much greater ease with writing personal essays.

Although the point of blogging is that it doesn't pay, I often steal from my blog for paid publication. I've based several magazine essays on blog posts, as well as an entire book.

Turning the blog into a book was extremely difficult, a tremendous amount of sustained, hard work. Blogging is easy; writing a book is difficult.

Let nothing human be foreign to me

Everything that has ever happened to me is still all with me.

It happened every single day in Brooklyn: awaken to fresh glory, fall asleep to blight and ruin.

LEGACY plays an important role in defining a good leader at any age.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that.

You should keep a photograph of Mick Lyons on the mantlepiece to keep children away from the fire

There will always be cheaters. It is human nature. It will never be 100 percent clean, in any sport.

The word 'comfort' comes from the Latin words for 'with' and 'strength' and originally meant operating from a position of power.

Change always starts with a girl.

I need to be happy. I need to set that example for my daughter so that she goes into something she loves, not because other people want her to do something. It's a good feeling, it's freeing.

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do.

Ask a toad what is beauty....; he will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat head, a yellow belly and a brown back.