Branding experts believe that just because they have rethought a company's image or name, the rest of us will automatically fall in line.

Only institutions that go about the old-fashioned business of taking in deposits from customer A and lending them out to customer B should be called banks. The rest should call themselves what they are. 'Parlors' would be appropriate, or 'dens' - words more suitable to venerable betting pursuits.

I think the absence of socks on men wearing suits and brogues is a problem. They'll live to regret that.

The fact is, unlike a lot of writers, I credit the people who help me. A lot of writers out there have a ton of researchers and they don't get credited in the book.

People think they have to be ambitious. But at a certain age, all you want is to be around nice, decent people.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure.