Any suggestion that Mexicans are fundamentally different from Americans should be taken as racist on its face; America, after all, is a pluralistic society, and Mexico is hardly the alien civilization that some (really, just Samuel Huntington) would suggest.

I want to have enough space to, I don't know, think thoughts. I mean, I just - I don't know that I'm capable of having an exciting, profound thought every week that's worth a column.

One problem with how we think about the Bible is that people tend to jam it into narrower categories, when in fact it is many things all at once.

I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that.

I feel like there's lot of people who know finance and economics better than I do. There are lots of people who are better storytellers than I am. But the space that I occupy of storytelling about finance and economics is - more people want it than can do it.

Writing a column, a weekly column for the New York Times, is really tough, and I wasn't prepared for the demands that that involved.

I do think students in public school (and private) should be required to study the Bible. [...] As a matter of pure education, it's shocking that we [the americans] are not compelled to learn the book, which is the source of our language, our common stories, our political structure, our conflicts.