I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.
I remember when I interviewed at MSNBC, one of the first things they said to me was, 'In your tapes, you had a mustache, right?' I said, 'Yeah, I recently took it off.' I said, 'If you hire me, you get to decide if you want it or not.' They said, 'No...
If there's one thing I fear most in this world its not living my life to the fullest. It's not doing crazy, fun, and off the wall things. It's not traveling around the world while I still can. It's also regret, I don't wanna regret anything.
I got invited to what's called the Gifting Suite in Toronto. I had the day off, so I thought I'd go and see what's what. You come out laden with wonderful stuff. Apparently, if you go to the Oscars, you get given things like iPads. Not that I'm in it...
I've never really considered doing stand up, but I have done readings/spoken word things fairly often in which I'll just tell a bunch of stories and run off at the mouth. I'm a big tangent person.
I was so full of joy, the happiest kid. Things changed. I don't want to talk about it. I needed attention. I was pathologically shy. I'd climb the highest tree or try to ski off the highest mountain. I'd get into fights. I wanted contact. I'd hit som...
I actually started an adult book, worked on it for about two years, and then decided it just wasn't coming together for me, and thought I'll go back to children's books, and almost immediately I started 'Holes,' and it just seemed to take off on me.
Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away. The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.
I certainly had my God-can-you-just-take-me-now-I've-just-had-it-I'm-checking-out-let-me-off-the-train-I'm-done kind of thing. But, you know, I would never actually do it. I just can't imagine what it would take to do that.
Time and again, we let the fear of loss overpower rational decision-making and often make ourselves worse off just to avoid a potential loss. Psychologists call this loss aversion, and it means we often tend to prefer avoiding losses at the expense o...
Whenever I get the sort of fancy pants idea that I'm doing anything other than pure expression things start to go wrong. When I get too premeditated, things start to go wrong. I just shut that part of my brain off.
We have to look at the long-term energy requirements of our country and how we figure out how to get off foreign oil. That is the ultimate goal because we are dependent so much on foreign oil that we are really strapped in what we can do as a country...
Zombies are so popular. There's a lot of chaff out there. For every one person who is legitimately passionate about zombies, there are a hundred people who are thinking, 'Hey, I can make a buck off of this.' The problem is that some of their stuff is...
Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stre...
They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets ...
I think 'Comic Book: The Movie' is the apex of my career in terms of making a personal statement that has significance to me and resonates with biographical detail about not only my career, but all the people that I've worked with in my career. All o...
I hurt my knee, and that messed up my running, and boy did that ever just have a cascade effect. I've gained about thirty pounds that my doctors have screamed at me about. I've got to get that off, and I know that.
I believe that you are not stuck with a pre-destiny. I believe that there is ways to see all these things that are laid down in front of you and where you belong and to smack yourself in the face when you realize that you've strayed off your path and...
I think the discipline comes with turning that cellphone and Blackberry off and unplugging completely. You do that and you go through some withdrawals in the beginning. You start thinking, 'Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?' You forget ...
Journalism is being pushed into a space where I don't think it should ever go, where it's trying to support the monetization model of the Web by driving page views. So what you have is a drop-off of long-form journalism, because long-form pieces are ...
You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way.
