And what we were trying to offer every day was one-on-one attention. The goal was to have a one-to-one ratio with every one of these students.

In hospitals I feel palpable comfort. I feel the competence, the expertise, so much education and money, all of the supplies sterile, everything packaged, sealed tight. My fears evaporate when the automatic doors shush open.

Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year.

You might not be able to operate your own Learjet and have an unlimited expense account, but if you have a reasonable expectation for a print-based product, whether it's a newspaper or a magazine, you can certainly exist.

We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

Paper is a uniquely beautiful format, more so than the web, I think: you need to invest in the aesthetics.