My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, user's manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest - and yet it is all these things.

I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things.

I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.

Restaurants remind me of bands: there's lots of camaraderie, people work very closely together, very hard, and it's a bad job to pick if you want to make lots of money. Whether music or food, the reward always has to be because you love it.

Republicans seem to be gambling that most Americans won't care about a few rich private equity managers if their own taxes go down, their stock portfolio goes up, and economic growth accelerates.

If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

Money goes where it's rewarded. Money goes where it is needed the most.