What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.

The thing is, if you make best-sellerdom your goal, you're going to be in trouble. It's a very nice thing to have happen, but if one makes that a goal like, say, a literary writer has the goal of getting the Pulitzer Prize, that's so unpredictable.

The main thing I look for in a recipe is taste, which is different from caterers and restaurants, who first ask 'How does it look?'

Catering is extremely demanding financially and physically. It's a business.

One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.

I think the best part of learning a language is that you can see the country's culture through the language. And it gives you different levels of understanding of that culture when you really try to dig in and learn it.

Before playing football, I didn't fit in anywhere. My parents didn't have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I'd come back to my hood and read.

If the money is right, I will fight a bear.