Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we're simultaneously both cowardly and arrogant. We don't know the answers, so we assume they must not exist.

If you move furniture all day, if you're a construction worker, if you have a job that's real physical, this idea that there is a sport that involves the kind of conventional, traditional view of toughness, you see that still as a positive thing.

But no matter how many times we re-rank the presidents, in another 200 years, the top presidents will still be Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson, because they defined what a president is. They are the idea, and you can't be better than the idea.

Why don't I like crowds? I suppose the worst possible thing I could say is that I don't like people, and that crowds are just collections of people. That seems like a very nihilistic way to look at the world.

People can demand someone they've never met be arrested and thrown in jail forever because they know it's never going to happen and they're never going to see this person.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

In the Far East, it's very normal for people to wear masks in flu season. I don't know if I'd ever do that, though, because I don't like having things on my face.