I hope not too much on them. Well, really, we have to concentrate on the grim emergencies, and when we have solved them, we shall be in a position to deal with the future of the world in a manner to give the best results, and the most lasting results, for the common peoples of all the lands. But one has only a certain amount of life and strength, and only so many hours in the day, and other emergencies press upon us too much to be drawn into those very, very complicated, tangled, and not in all cases attractive jungles.

What I'm not willing to accept is the enduring status quo around maternity. I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn't be punished if I didn't perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth. I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike's most widely marketed athletes, couldn't secure these protections, who could?

We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Don’t read your reviews. […] Don’t write reviews. (Your judgment’s always tainted.) […] Don’t write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)

“Perfect happiness!”—waking in the morning to a clear & benevolent-seeming sky, a view from a window of a beautiful (if overgrown) garden, a cat purring. The excitement of rewriting the previous day’s work, & continuing on from that point energized & hopeful. For a writer, “happiness” isn’t likely to ever be “perfect”—but it is likely to be bound up with the work-in-progress. First drafts tend to be frustrating, exhausting—subsequent drafts sometimes move swiftly, even miraculously. For most adults, “Perfect is the enemy of good”—we learn to appreciate whatever measure of happiness we have, however modest.

On two dates: 23 January 1961 and 13 March 2009 (my two weddings).

And so I finally felt that I’d given up. ... And towards the morning, I started thinking, “Well, failure is actually what most people experience in boxing.” ... And I found a way to write about the whole sport by way of beginning with failure, with the image of failure.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So, though they’re intelligent people — and my father in particular is interested in books and has subsequently, since his retirement, attended classes at the University of Buffalo — nonetheless, they didn’t have any opportunity to be educated. So they’ve always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. It wasn’t an easy life, and I won’t go into details, but there were a lot of problems. And yet they were never defeated. Somebody else might have been defeated. Someone else might have been really depressed, or become an alcoholic or something, because there were personal problems and economic crises. But I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

“Most admiring” an individual may depend upon knowing her—or him—only at a distance. Public personalities may be the easiest to admire, for obvious reasons. Michelle Obama has seemed to me enormously admirable, like President Obama. And—of course!—Oprah, a great American original. Among people whom I know personally, & have known for some time, Gloria Vanderbilt is most admirable. There are too many things to say about Gloria to fit this space—& indeed I have said a good deal about Gloria in the past—but she is one of the most remarkable persons of my acquaintance. Equally admirable, among my friends who are “known” to the public, whom nonetheless I know as individuals, is Steve Martin, remarkable also for the diversity of his talent(s). But what is most impressive about Steve is that, greatly gifted as he is in comedy, his comic vision is essentially unifying—radiantly goofy, never injurious to anyone. It has become a rare comedy that doesn’t trade upon marginalizing & insulting others & it is really quite remarkable how through his long career Steve has never insulted, hurt, or objectified anyone else for the sake of laughter.

Amid so much blatant cruelty in our political situation, such shocking indifference to the lives & welfare of those living at the margins of an affluent society, I think it must be this institutionalized cruelty, & the hypocrisy that surrounds it. “Making America great again”—for whom? Wealthy white people? The word “deplore” is particularly relevant here.