I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.

I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy.

Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor-it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.

Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.