In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin.
A newspaperman said, 'You have to have a team in New York.' I replied, 'Who says you have to have a team in New York?' What came out in the papers was a headline that said, Giles Says, 'Who needs New York?' I confess that quote bothered me, and there seemed to be no way to dispose of it. It was repeated again and again.
I kind of got more interested in writing after I turned in my last college essay and nobody was going to tell me what kind of academic papers to write anymore. I could write whatever I wanted, and I realized that I actually liked it when I could choose what I would write.
I guess I'm entertaining; I guess I'm interesting. I guess the things that I say sell papers. I guess they sell magazines. I don't know.
Chicago is an exciting place which renews itself. The workshop system encourages close reading and frank discussions of papers and ideas.
Around 2005, the Canadian army tapped me to do a dramatization for a series of foresight workshops they'd done. They had stacks of papers and needed it boiled down to something simple enough for a 4-star general to understand. We decided to do it as a story. That's how I created 'Crisis in Zefra.'
Maybe some of today's papers have too many 'feel-good' features, but there is a lot of good news out there.
I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.
It is very annoying - things have been written by people who didn't know me at all or Princess Diana. They were written by people who never knew me or met me. It did make me angry. I just stopped reading the papers.
Americans who read the papers or watch Jay Leno have been aware for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility - about 1 in 45,000 - that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036.
The first thing I do in the morning is have an espresso - straight up - and read the papers. I like 'The Independent,' 'The Times,' and the 'Financial Times.'
I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.
I was always explaining why my term papers were never on time. I think that's where I got my acting training!
One of the first papers I wrote at the University of Wisconsin, in 1977, was on stem cells. I realized that if I changed the environment that these cells were in, I could turn the cells into bone, and if I changed the environment a bit more, they would form fat cells.
When people stare at you, and you read about yourself in papers - at 13, it just got very confusing. I thought that if this is what it's like to be famous, I don't like it one bit.
There is a great deal of busywork to a writer's life, as to a professor's life, a great deal of work that matters only in that, if you don't do it, your desk becomes very full of papers. So, there is a lot of letter answering and a certain amount of speaking, though I try to keep that at a minimum.
At last, the newspapers discovered the Bears. I kept writing articles about upcoming games, and by reading the papers, I learned editors like superlatives. I blush when I think how many times I wrote that the next game was going to be the most difficult of the season or how a new player was the fastest man in the West.
The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.
Put all the menus and TV guides and magazines and local info papers in the drawers. I hate clutter!
The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.
I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.
Cynics will say there are no good people out there. And if you read the papers and watch TV news you could be convinced of that. But there are good people.
As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.
There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
In hindsight, Watergate was a curse as well as a blessing for American journalism. The courageous reporting of the 'Post' and the 'New York Times' - coupled with the favourable Supreme Court rulings on publication of the Pentagon Papers - were landmarks for the interpretation of First Amendment rights and the freedom of the press.
It might help to know that in Afghanistan citizenship papers and birth certificates and the official registration of births and deaths are the exotica of faraway places. One is born 'in the time of the pomegranate harvest' or some such thing or one's birthdate is recorded as the first day of the year if you are even aware of the year you were born.
There are some movie stars in Hollywood that are so scared, they also tell the reporter that they are recording them, in case there is something wrong with what they wrote about them in the papers.
I was on holiday recently and I came home to find that one of the papers here had 'bikini'd' me on the beach. I was wearing a grossly unflattering costume and they had published photographs of me taken from behind. I looked dreadful. I went into our local newsagent and bought up every copy.
My husband and I work to keep our weekends pretty unscheduled, which leaves room for spontaneity. I love low-key mornings at home, making breakfast with my kids, snuggling together in bed, and reading the papers.
All my high school papers were written in the rare book room.
My dad spent most of the '50s and early '60s actually acting as sort of an advance man for the Justice Department, as a civil rights lawyer. So it was actually reading his papers after he passed away a few years ago that first started me thinking about this... What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man?
Sunday afternoon is for papers and writing.
It is a matter of great indifference to me what criticism is printed in the papers and the magazines. I am simply working out my own ideas in my own way.
Usually, historical revelations come from days of legwork, ploughing through piles of letters and papers in archives or even private homes, looking for the telling phrase or letter that someone else has missed.
I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.
