I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.

All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving. Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits. Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?" The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.

In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.