If you think I'm annoying and preachy now, you should have known me in grade school.

Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

But there was something psychological happening there that was just a little bit different. And the other thing was, there was no stigma. Kids weren't going into the 'Center-for-Kids-That-Need-More-Help' or something like that. It was 826 Valencia.

We see the beauty within and cannot say no.

Having lost people when they were young, you feel intimately acquainted with mortality, I guess. Though I procrastinate worse than anybody.

We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

I worked at Salon.com way back when they started, and there's just unmeasurable value to distributing words online, too, but I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning.