The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have been tired for decades. I am tired in the morning and I am tired while becalmed in the slough of the afternoon, and I am tired in the evening, except right when I try to go to sleep.

When I still lived in Manhattan, people-watching was my hobby, and I spent many Sunday afternoons eating up the scene from a window seat at a Starbucks on Broadway.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar.

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.

Every single one of my books had its title changed almost as we were going to press, for all sorts of different reasons.