Our Acquaintances—not Our Friends—are Our

I Write My Books To Challenge My Own Feelings And Theories. Perhaps Most Surprising Was What I Learned About Rice Farming. It Was Really Interesting To Think Of How Different Asian And Western Cultures Are As A Result Of The Kinds Of Agricultural Practices That Our Ancestors Used For Thousands Of Years. The Life Of A Chinese Peasant In The Middle Ages Was So Dramatically Different From The Life Of A European Peasant - Night And Day Different.

Practice Isn't The Thing You Do Once You're Good. It's The Thing You Do That Makes You Good.

I'm In The Storytelling Business, And So You're Always Drawn To The Unusual. And Early On, I Discovered That's The Easiest Way To Tell Stories... If You Come Up Through A Newspaper As I Did, Your Whole Goal Is To Get A Story On The Front Page, And You Only Get Something On The Front Page If It's Unusual.

If Everyone Has To Think Outside The Box, Maybe It Is The Box That Needs Fixing.

I Don't Think People Are Averse To Thinking About Things In A Deep Way, But We Have Limited Time And Opportunity To Think About Things In A Deep Way. I Think That's Why There Is An Appetite For Non-fiction - It Gives People The Opportunity To Reexamine Ordinary Experience And Be Smarter About It.