One of my clearest, happiest memories is of myself at fourteen, sitting up in bed, being handed a large glass of warm buttermilk by my mother because I had a sore throat, and she saying how envious she was that I was reading 'The Catcher in the Rye' for the first time.

Flipping through the channels late at night, I'll come across 'The Longest Yard' and not be able to get up off the couch until Burt Reynolds has scored the winning touchdown.

Sports - especially the NBA - function as a place where American society pretends to discuss and pretends to solve questions and historical agonies that can't possibly be solved within the realm of sports.

I'm really interested in the new nonfiction. I think the hyper-digital culture has changed our brains in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

I do not want to send anybody else's child to war.

Understanding that yes, we are committing more resources than we thought we might be in protecting our homeland and prosecuting a war and so it's understandable that we would be going through a period of deficits.

Conventional wisdom tells us we'll only be happier after a divorce if the marriage itself was a war zone.

Our pre-9/11 gun laws allow our enemies in the War on Terror to arm themselves right here in our own country.