Jeans of any sort should not be worn in nice restaurants. They pollute the landscape. They should also not be worn in the workplace if no other workers wear them. However, if your office is casual, go for it.

Chivalry isn't dead. It's just no longer gender-based.

Politeness decrees that you must listen to be kind; intelligence decrees that you must listen to learn.

That's how a nation's manners are going to be taught - from watching others' behavior and learning from the effects of that behavior.

Fartlek, or speed play, is variable-pace running that emphasizes creativity. During a 30-minute run, choose objects to run to - telephone poles, trees, buildings, other runners, whatever. Make choices that mark off different distances, so your pickups vary in length from 15 to 90 seconds, and modify your pace to match the distance.

I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.

Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists. The doctor/psychiatrist figures in my writing are alter egos of a kind, what I would have been had I not become a writer - a personal fantasy that I've fed into my fiction.

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.