And if there was something, suppose I wanted to write something really damning or embarrassing about one of the owners, that would really be a problem on the NFL's site.

I don't think there are many larger lessons to be found in sports.

And then ESPN fired me. I did not think that was a fitting punishment.

Jewish persecution is a historical memory of the present generation and people fear it in the present day, and that's why those references are so much more powerful. I just understand that better now.

I behaved poorly by starting this whole thing and I made some mistakes in dealing with it, and they made some mistakes in dealing with me, and taking down all my stuff was probably one of them.

Everyone needs a certain amount of money. Beyond that, we pursue money because we know how to obtain it. We don't necessarily know how to obtain happiness.

It was Orwellian. I completely disappeared, and disappeared the same day. It was by early that evening when the Times story ran. That was an overreaction. All human beings under pressure behave poorly.

Inevitably, these sorts of things are going to come back to blow up in people's faces.

But if you could make that mistake and press the send button and the entire world sees it forever.

Even though Rush is not me and the situations were very different, I think, in the Rush Limbaugh thing, ESPN was criticized for not acting, and you remember that after a couple days of controversy over Rush.

Heroic people take risks to themselves to help others. There's nothing heroic about accepting $5 million to go out and run around chasing a ball, although you may show fortitude or those other qualities while you do it.

I'm a smart guy, I know the history of this issue and why people care about it.

I'm working seven days a week in the fall. I couldn't possibly keep that up. This is only for the fall. In the last couple of years I've tended to do most of my serious writing in the winter, when there's nothing going on with football.

You know, some of the good part of blog theory was that blogs would be like diaries that the world could read. They would be spontaneous, whatever pops into your mind, as a diary would be.

And if there was something, suppose I wanted to write something really damning or embarrassing about one of the owners, that would really be a problem on the NFL's site.

It was actually a very nice little book done by a gift book company. They illustrated it with pictures from 1920s football, before there were face guards.

I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment.

I think that might have been an element in it, and people have asked me that very thing. Remember, Disney is the majority shareholder, but it is not an operating division of Disney.

Now, for pure bloggers, for individual people who are just posting their own thoughts, they would still run the same risk of saying something wrong or embarrassing, but they wouldn't harm their institutions by doing so.

I didn't view myself as attacking the boss. I viewed my boss at ESPN as the publisher and president of ESPN.

But by showing us live coverage of every bad thing happening everywhere in the world, cable news makes life seem like it's just an endless string of disasters - when, for most people in most places today, life is fairly good.

For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.

Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.

I think the thing that I most appreciate now is that stereotypes involving Jewish identity activate fears of persecution that exist in the present day.

Stereotypes involving Christian identity, Christian persecution is so far back in history now that no one fears it being revived, unless you live in China, I guess.

The ideals of the party were close to me, and I have tried to adhere to those principles all my life. In essence, they are the same as in the Ten Commandments in the Bible. I will never change my convictions.

The usual method of finding a little dongly thing that actually matches a gizmo I want to use is to go and buy another one, at a price that can physically drive the air from your body.

I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play, I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville, I think I have an audience by performing a lot!

For Democrats, nothing is any less complex than a 'West Wing' episode.

The bottom line is: You are in control of your reactions to things and how you view things.

I still have lots of friends from my pre-success days.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.

I think it's important to talk to my sisters when I have a big decision to make.

Whatever initiatives we launch, we must always put the interests of Singaporeans and Singapore first.

Don't buy other people's problems.

If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.

My mom taught me the power of love. I learned to focus on the long-term big picture from my father. His sense of humor and light-hearted approach always make me smile. My husband is a pivotal anchor in my life. His influence encourages me to be independent and take risks.

Sometimes, life slaps you in the face with beauty, screaming at you to take notice. Other times, it whispers in your ear and just suggests that you stop, look up, and take a deep breath.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

The red line must be drawn on Iran's nuclear enrichment program because these enrichment facilities are the only nuclear installations that we can definitely see and credibly target.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things freedom of speech freedom of conscience and the prudence never to practice either of them.

I don't think I've ever had a bad Valentine's Day, I mean... c'mon, y'all know I never get a bad Valentine. Nah. Um, no, I've never really had - I don't have a bad Valentine's Day. I never really think... it doesn't come up to my mind.

I wrote my first novel, 'Deadline,' in 1994 as an experiment.

In a sense, the United Nations is like a vase. Without a vase there can be no lasting bouquet of flowers; but the aroma--or perfume--depends on the flowers, not on the vase.

Clothing and makeup and hair and all of that so much indicates the kind of person you are inside and the person you are presenting on the outside. Sometimes they are in conflict, and sometimes they are the same. That psychology of the exterior informing the interior is just so interesting.

I agree with President Obama and Attorney General Holder that we need to reform our criminal sentencing laws.

If you bleed Black Label and you're going to be a man, you gotta get up there and do what you gotta do every day, relentless and as tired as you can be.

I got fed up with being in bands. I spent a couple of years touring the country in a smoked filled band, doing lots of drugs and being really unhealthy.

Slack is gratifying to work on in the same way that Flickr was. The mission is to make people's working lives simpler, more pleasant, more productive.