...these stories are a kind of beacon. By making stories full of empathy and amusement and the sheer pleasure of discovering the world, these writers reassert the fact that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'

It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.

Brad Pitt is really game to talk about whatever and is really fun to talk to and was totally up for discussing anything.

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

I was a chubby, unathletic kid and conformed to every possible stereotype you could imagine of someone who would end up in public broadcasting.

I am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say.