When you have spent too much time with something, you may lose sight of what's marvelous about it.

On one project I was hanging out with Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carrel, and Christian Bale, and trying to explain economics to them for a movie I'm an advisor on.

It's much easier to hire really great people like that in New York and in Brooklyn in particular, than it is in Washington.

So while the name Redskins is only a bit offensive, it’s extremely tacky and dated—like an old aunt who still talks about ‘colored people’ or limps her wrist to suggest someone’s gay.

I made one choice, for example, which is I'm just going to confine work to working hours. I'm not going to work on the weekend. I'm not going to be working while I'm with my son in the morning and in the evening.

Slate is not a political magazine but a lot of what it does is politics.

God is erratic, sometimes vindictive, sometimes merciful. The people I was taught were heroes - Jacob or Moses or David - were ambivalent figures, or worse. But that messiness was joyful, and challenging. I loved having a Bible that I could argue with.