I think I did 97 pitch meetings, and even at the 97th meeting, there were questions I was getting that I hadn't had in the - you know, any of the 96 preceding ones.

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.

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

My mother is somebody who I think of as having just an intense close focus. She's somebody who really can pay very, very close attention to the thing she's focusing on for a very long period of time, and that has served her incredibly well in her professional career. She knows - the things she knows, she knows them just so deeply.

Having good relations with lots of lots of different people helps a lot.

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

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.