I would love to have the power to stop waking at 3 a.m. every night to check my e-mail.

"Hi," I said. She came over, licked my hand discreetly, allowed herself to be scratched for a time, chased her tail in a dignified circle, lay down again. I remember thinking: "There are times God puts a choice in front of you." I often had such thoughts back then. We took the dog.

If you can listen well, people will say you're a good conversationalist.

Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction.

My favorite method of procrastination is to do something else that needs doing, but not quite so imminently. Sleeping is also good, as is drinking until you really can't do anything very well anymore.

There are now some mountains that my brain can no longer climb.

I can't think of a comparable level of cultural excitement about something since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in the 1960s.