My earliest memories of going to Fenway with my father are a blur: many games, me too young to care, but aware that our team 'stunk.' In those years, the 1960s, the Red Sox baseball card I always coveted most was not Carl Yastrzemski's but the far more ordinary Felix Mantilla's.

I have never liked the memoir form because I tend to think that memory fictionalizes anyway. Once you claim that you are writing a narrative purely from memory, you are already in the realm of fiction.

I think the fact that my wife died in Mexico City makes it very important to me; my life went up in smoke at that moment, the family and the future we were going to have. At that point, I was anchored to the city in a way I've never been anchored to a place before.

What's important about me is that I really have, in ways I never could have foreseen when I was young, a writing career that's reached a lot of different places.

It changed my life in a lot of ways - before I got that role I was just going from job to job, not really having enough money to be able to do what I wanted to do.

To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.

Repealing the estate tax won't create jobs, it won't boost GDP, and it won't add efficiency to the market. Instead, repealing the estate tax will simply add to the debt, hurt our ability to build a stronger economy and worsen economic inequality.

I've made it clear that I'm not taking special interest PAC money or accepting donations from lobbyists - ever. I want to represent the interests of the citizens.