The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn't really have any effect on me.
it's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly.
I've written a book that hopefully will give people a sense of what [presidency] was like. I hope my friends read it and say, "Now I understand." I hope my detractors read it and say, "Well, I better understand."
It's great when people appreciate your work, but I don't know how seriously to take it. The amazing thing is that I found something so early that I can support myself doing, and that can even be extremely lucrative, but I love it either way.
If you hear what people had to say about Abraham Lincoln or what they had to say about FDR, or what they had to say about Ronald Reagan when he first came in and was trying to change our approach to government, that elicited huge responses.
Although we may come from vastly different stories and very different walks of life, we are one people who possess common values and common ideals; who celebrate individual excellence but also share a recognition that together, we can accomplish great and wonderful things we can't accomplish alone.
I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.
For a stretch of time, I got really caught up in the idea that what people liked about my work was that I was a young guy who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.