The world is so different for a child, waking in the mornings, wide-eyed and ready to take it all in.

I am, more than anything else, happy.

There's not as many people as one would think you can be completely open with.

To be happy is, I guess, the most important thing in life.

Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated.

While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something - I hung to something - there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents.

Everyone in my family was pretty tall, so we always thought I would get bigger.

I'm torn about late parenting. I believe people should spend their twenties living and having fun and not having any regrets later. I also think people in their thirties generally make better parents but so many of my friends are having trouble - myself included - as fathers get older.