Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.

A game is great, in my view, only if it can be played happily by a sane person of at least average intelligence for several hours a day for fifty years. Both pool and billiards qualify.

To apply spin with security, you must learn to make a snug bridge with your forefinger looped over the cue. When you hit the cueball, follow straight through; don't let your cue rise in the air after impact.

If you know a good player who is tempted by pool hustling, introduce him at once to a career guidance counselor, a psychotherapist, or a surgeon who does lobotomies.

There's a lot of politics in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There's a lot us artists would change about the induction ceremony and who they pick.

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

Are we still a country that takes risks, that innovates, that believes anything is possible? Or are we a country that is resigned to whatever liberty the government decides to dish out?