I became interested in the United Way, because, in our contract with the television networks, we had a certain amount of promo time for ourselves. It was so much money, about $40 million a year. We had a couple of extra minutes on each tape, on each network. We used them for a while on relatively self-serving things, and I thought, rather than have that time be spent on saying “the NFL is great,” we should try to use it for some good. That’s when we bound our relationship with the United Way.

I like reading, I like swimming.I go snorkeling if I can. But not because I’m stuck, but because I enjoy them. And when I am swimming or whatever, I find I have more time to think.

I love making jam. Plum is best.

I'm making cheap electricity,

I wrote it because it was so. Because it was the force of my experience that pushed the book out of me, like a baby is pushed out of its mother. The mother doesn’t say, “I’ll push this one out for my friends.” You push the book out because you’ve got to – as you push out the baby.

I still think the greatest gift you can give your kids is easy exposure to interesting things. Not compelling them to go see things, but making them feel that art and literature are just parts of the world

Well, it certainly influences my manner of writing, because I always see Darwin as a model of the act of explanation and of argument; the morality, the ethics of explanation, maybe.

You have to discipline your mind and your heart and not to be unduly nostalgic about those losses.

Writing about how much you love your wife is bad form, it seems like boasting

My very wise and politically savvy 17-year-old daughter says I get too emotional about political issues. I think she’s right. She knows that if she sees me race across a room, I have just read something about Trump. Turning ideas into feelings is the thing an essayist is supposed to do, but political punditry should probably be more detached.