It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have is that I live above the store - so I have no commute! So we make sure that when I'm in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm - even if I have to go back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends just to get out of the bubble.

I do take a break, but I’ve also got – right now, I’m writing another book, another memoir [a follow-up to his bestselling book Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir], so even though I’m on a break technically, I’ve got that. I’ve got a production company so things are always rolling. I’m always spinning a lot of plates.

My wife and I have always tried to explain to the girls — even when I had to go off on nine-month cruises in the Mediterranean or in the Pacific — why I was doing it, and what it was all about, that I felt that I could contribute to the military.

Either you’re listening out for the kids or you’re writing. So I wrote when the kids went to bed. I wrote between nine and midnight those years. And my husband would listen out if the little guy was sick or something. It worked out.

I used to tell Kristina, “I choose to be married to you every day.”

reconcile us to life as it is, and make us more real to ourselves.

It brings the freedom of having seen a lot of things and survived them.

Beyond that, editing an anthology gives me a chance to find a few new readers for my colleagues’ excellent work.

The only habit you can rely in the Scarlet O'Hara rule: Tomorrow is another day. And you hope you are there for it.

Touchstone books….I don’t know. So Long, See You Tomorrow; The Moviegoer; A Fan’s Notes; Alice Munro’s stories.