Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.

To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.

One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on shelves, and in putting the word out that they're there, moves at a speed that is not the speed of writing, let alone of reading.

The future of time, of how it's won or lost, endured or enjoyed, expanded or compressed, will depend on how it's valued, not how it's measured.

I learned that life is filled with ups and downs and it's just about how you react to them.

My first stand-up experience, like most comics, was horrible. I got booed offstage. I thought I was funnier than I was. But the walk from the back of the room to the stage was the most excited I'd ever been about anything in my life other than kissing a girl. That's how I knew I had to get back onstage and do it again.

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it's a strength.

Just saying 'I want this and I want that' doesn't do it. My boys share and share alike in the income that the organization brings in, so that teaches them the lesson: If you work, you can earn some money. That's how life is; it's the American way.