I had never really felt settled in Brooklyn. I think it had to do with growing up in New Jersey and being someone who her whole life wanted to live in the city, and the city meant Manhattan.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

We secretly believe that if only we achieve some elusive goal - fitting into a pair of skinny jeans, or redoing our kitchen or getting that promotion - that it will make us happy. But the pain of our insecurity is hidden in all that racing around.

I was raised in an observant Jewish household, so for me, Hebrew prayers - the sounds, the sunlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows of a synagogue - bring my father back to me as surely as if he were sitting next to me, my head pressed against his shoulder.

I had a lot of friends, family friends, that had season tickets, and we'd all go when we were little kids. And you'd go after you played your own baseball game and change out of your uniform in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium to go put on street clothes and go watch the game.

Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.

I grew up in Adelaide, Australia. No one in my family had finished high school, and I was smart at mathematics, so I became an academic and got my Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford. I didn't set out to be a businessperson.

The notion of 'we' is very important. I think, for any family, any community to be able to say 'we' in this family, it means something. It's dangerous to society when somebody will place himself or herself on the outside of 'we.'