I've been all sorts of different shapes and sizes at different times in my life.
I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly.
What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties, particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table, and no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8.
There were times when gangs would approach me, but my father was way stronger than them. They would come make threats and stuff, and I was like, 'You don't know the opposition I've got upstairs. I'm not scared of you.'
I'm not an immigrant - I was born and raised in New York. My parents are Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rico is a part of the U.S., for the people that don't know. So my whole life, I've identified as an American. There are times when I've gone to Puerto Rico, and there, I'm seen as the American cousin.
I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count!
I am more excited about 'Divinity of Doubt: The God Question' than any other book in my entire career, and I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, three of them reaching number one.
A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.
That's one of the problems with Hollywood. It'll say 'policeman,' and an unless it says 'black policeman,' a lot of times you won't even get the opportunity to read for it, which is kind of crazy, but that's the way it is.
With my Roman Catholic upbringing, I have a set of principles that serve me well in good times and bad.
At times, when I reach my saturation point, I go to some random place and throw my phone away.
A lot of times, losing a fight is tough. In your darkest hours, I guess your true colors show.
Do you know how many congressional liaisons we are going to have? I don't either, but I told Pence, it should be four times whatever Obama had. I don't know how many he had, but I'm telling you that didn't work out.
I'm undefeated in Scrabble. I can figure out an opponent's strategy and mold mine to offset theirs. I play a couple times a week, and I'll often play a game on my bed by myself against myself, which I realize sounds completely mad.
My best career decision was probably not giving up when I wanted to. God as well as my family and friends were there for me during my toughest times.
There are times when you got to put a little 'extra' in, especially on a card at WrestleMania or SummerSlam because it's no time to hold anything back. You have to pull out all of the stops.
I saw Berry in concert a couple of times in the late '70s - and like almost every North American male of a certain age, I went because a friend was hired by Berry that very day to be part of the legend's backup band.
Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.
In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued.
I'm a sinner just like everybody else and I have my faults and I've been through my dark times in my life to where I wasn't walking the walk and talking the talk, or I may have been talking the talk, but I wasn't walking the walk.
I have said it on several occasions, several times from this podium, that providing a quality education for our children is high on my priority list. I will not stop now.
All musicians and artists - we all got quirks that have to be put up with at certain times.
It is therapeutic for me to act, to be able to slip into somebody else's skin, and know it's not you, but know that you bring a lot of yourself to it. At times in my life it's provided me with a lot of confusion. It's also provided me with a lot of discovery.
The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly.
When I first started submitting my work professionally - and we're talking years and years ago - I had no patience for editorial response times. I hated waiting to hear back from people, hated waiting to see my work in print.
I will always treasure the privilege of writing the 'Sports of The Times' column.
The best advice that was given to me was that I had to be 10 times smarter, braver and more polite to be equal. So I did.
What keeps me up at night? Sometimes it's day-to-day work stuff. And a lot of the times, it's, 'Am I making the wrong decisions in terms of reaching young women?'
If 'The New York Times' didn't exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. 'The Huffington Post' and everything else is predicated on 'The New York Times'. It's a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information - and her confidence.
You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about.
The 'New York Times' undertakes extreme vetting against Republicans every single day.
I get 'USA Today,' the 'New York Times,' 'Wall Street Journal' and the 'Star-Telegram' at my doorstep. I can't do without them.
He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.
I've found that men I've dated who are in the same business can be really competitive. I've found a great group of girlfriends in the same business who aren't competitive, but a few times guys have started comparing careers and it has been... challenging.
You know, there are times when you play a song over and over and over and you get a little tired of it and you let it sit for a while. It's like, you may love eating sushi, but if you eat it every single day, you're going to get a little tired of it.
Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back.
