Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was the natural state that we existed in. For one thing, she suffered from a debilitating depression throughout my childhood, and depression is nothing if not static.

There was something so immensely redemptive and exciting for me to imagine that my unknown father was not just a man who had abandoned me but a noble man of adventure who had no choice.

I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.

While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States?

If you cannot work on the marriage or the women is a moron, staying married and cheating makes the most sense because divorce is disruptive to the family life and your bank account.

Whether it's his beloved game of polo or his magical success in business, Norman Brinker simply does not know how to lose.

Everybody has a love/hate relationship with their own country.

Yeah, romantic comedies are the hardest movies to make. Maybe one works a year.