Shortly after the birth control pill was approved for public distribution, one woman wrote to John Rock, its inventor, "You should be afraid to meet your maker." Rock, despite being Catholic replied, "My dear Madam, in my faith, we are taught that the Lord is with us always. When my time comes, there will be no need for introductions."

My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.

We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.

Television allows the audience to argue with the creator in a way you don't in a movie.

I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories... If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.