For me, marriage is a grotesque, unforgiving, clunky contrivance. Yet society pushes it as a shimmering ideal.

I'm not religious. I do have a baby - a four-month old girl - and that's a religion in itself.

As a John Kerry supporter, I wanted to send him a check. But then it occurred to me that most of that money would end up in the hands of advertising agencies and television networks. And the money would be used to create deceptive commercials that flatter our point of view and shade the facts our way. And I wasn't comfortable with that. But on the other hand, that's how the game is played. You're always grappling.

Instead of three networks you have three hundred or three thousand. Audiences are inundated with programming, and that sometimes gives them a sense of petulant entitlement.

I was brought up Catholic and, of course, I strayed and repudiated it. That's a painful thing to go through, because you have to look back and realize that you wasted a gigantic chunk of your life.

I guess I started to realize that being an agnostic was such a wimpy position.

To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat cat politicians and secret conspiracies don't control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that.