To me, 'The End of the Jews' - both the title and the novel itself - is about the end of pat, uncritical ways of understanding oneself in the world.
The heart of Jesus is compassionate and understanding. It has felt the sting of ingratitude, and when my heart suffers from that same offense, I can turn to him, and he understands my feelings.
We need a pedagogy free from fear and focused on the magic of children's innate quest for information and understanding.
With women and women, I think there's an understanding. Nobody knows what a woman feels or experiences but another woman. We are the nurturers, and there are times when we need to be nurtured.
But to sustain a marriage for 50 years, you have to get real a little bit and find someone who is understanding and who you can grow with. My mom always says, 'Marry the man who loves you a millimeter more.'
The bitter might be just an initial reaction of, 'Oh my goodness, it's sold,' but not really understanding fully that I will be chairman emeritus of the new company, which is Ebony Media Operations. It is African-American led and owned, and I have a seat on the board, and I also have an equity position in the company, so I'm still there.
I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I'd lay my cards down on that, and say that it's that that I'm trying to do.
From Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan who pioneered the scientific method, to George Lemaitre, the 20th century Belgian priest who first developed a mathematical foundation for the 'Big Bang,' people of faith have played a key role in advancing scientific understanding.
I think connecting to a character is like connecting to any human being - either you like them or you don't. You might not be able to list the reasons why you love your best friend or what attracted you to them; it's just something that you feel - a connection, an understanding, or a curiosity that makes you want to get to know them.
Tinkering is a way of understanding difficult problems, of wrapping our heads around them and quantifying the unknowns.
I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from - what he means by this or by that.
The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.
With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.
My father was a die maker for 39 years, so I had a basic understanding of the automobile industry and what the manufacturing world was like, just from the opportunity to spend time with him - just talking, because he was a car buff.
