Being a father can 'unreason' your worldview, or at least make it very flexible, and that can create all sorts of fun and insights. It's sad that children's open-eyed wonder and sense of play begin to fade as they approach adolescence. One grand function of fathering is to keep the fading to a minimum.

Kristina, my wife, and I thought about this one day when the kids were, of course, watching television. And we took a big blanket and put it in the backyard and said, 'Let's go out on our back and look at the sky and call it sky television.' We saw all kinds of things.

I think I would have written more books if I'd had fewer kids or had them earlier, but I think the books in general would have had a little less spark to them.

I believe there's a secret chemical that's turned loose when you have kids that says you've got to survive, you've got to be strong. That keeps you on your toes, besides all kinds of other things, when you have three little ones running around.

I was born in Nizhny Novgorod to a very poor family and unfortunately my father and mother separated when I was very little.

I love celery and people don't use it a lot. Celery and flavors in that family - it really brightens and is refreshing.

Would we be a better society if we made marriage simply a private contract between two individuals, with no wider implications of kinship and family? I do not believe that we would.

My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.