Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.

It's so easy to print in the Midwest. You're saving months in shipping and customs, so we have started printing a number of books there.

I went to Saudi Arabia in 2010, and spent most of my time in Jeddah and the King Abdullah Economic City.

The key thing is, even if you only have a couple of hours a month, those two hours shoulder-to-shoulder, next to one student, concentrated attention, shining this beam of light on their work, on their thoughts and their self-expression, is going to be absolutely transformative, because so many of the students have not had that ever before.

We've become a nation of indoor cats, he'd said. A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers. Thank God these weren't the kind of Americans who settled this country. They were a different breed! They crossed the country in wagons with wooden wheels! People croaked along the way, and they barely stopped. Back then, you buried your dead and kept moving.

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.

I'm interested in the human impact of the giant foot of misplaced government. After all, we encounter it every day.