And let me make this very clear - unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class. As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion.
I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion.
We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens.
Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father.
Everybody's a train wreck in their own very special way. But there's something wildly freeing about someone who's unapologetic, who knows they're a wreck and doesn't even try to hide it, just bulldozes through life.
We have to choose every day to be active participants. To wake up in the morning and choose this life and make something of it is an incredible thing. Not many living creatures have that option. We have so many opportunities and options - it's a huge burden, but it's also the most freeing part of our lives.
The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.
For the vast majority of my adult life, I was a freelance writer, forever scrambling for work that paid an insulting non-amount.
I have to be a freelance writer for the rest of my life, unless I get some kind of real lucky break. But other than that, I'll always have to work. I always worry about whether my stuff is going to get over. Will they like this, will they like that?
My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it.
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
Please know that being 80 is not a scary thing. When you're 80, your life is much freer.
I always loved hip-hop, being a black little kid. I always used to freestyle on the bus when I was young. It was always a part of my life.
My life used to be like that game of freeze tag we played as kids. Once tagged, you had to freeze in the position you were in. Whenever something happened, I'd freeze like a statue, too afraid of moving the wrong way, of making the wrong decision. The problem is, if you stand still too long, that's your decision.
I see lots of women having beautiful children later in life. And, if not, just freeze your eggs!
Smoking kills you, but life kills you, and if you don't want to die, go into a freezer when you are born and nothing will happen to you.
I hate the idea of people nicking my stuff, but in all honesty, I'm pretty well off. If a genuinely desperate man on his last gasp nicks my coat from the pub on a freezing night, well, he's welcome to it. It'll change his life. Mine's only inconvenienced by having to buy another one.
When you have no money in New York, you're living in a shoebox, and it's freezing. When you have no money in L.A., you're living in a slightly larger shoebox, and you can go outside and feel okay about your life for a minute.
If I could eat French fries every day of my life, I would.
The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part.
