Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.

I didn't write my book, 'I Don't Care About Your Band,' in order to give women a brand-new set of dating rules they need to feel terrible about not abiding. I wrote my book to make the women who read it feel good about themselves, and a little more entitled to be treated well by the guys they go out with.

Are you kidding? I'm a terrible cook, but John is a really great one. Literally, I never cook. The whole time we were dating, I prepared two officially romantic meals. Both of them were such disasters that he begs me never to go into the kitchen again.

I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.

I don't think a powerful man would be interesting unless he'd be nice, attractive, with or without the power. Men are interested in powerful men. Women are interested in terrific men!

I'm not a fighter, but I would love to be a boxer because I love the courage and toughness. I mean, there can be nothing more terrifying than walking into an arena and looking at Mike Tyson in the ring.

I don't understand why people say that I am full of courage. I feel terribly nervous.

I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

For me, it's not necessarily interesting to play a strong, fearless woman. It's interesting to play a woman who is terrified and then overcomes that fear. It's about the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear, it's overcoming it.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.

I'm a very good storyteller; I have a lot of compassion for people. That's very useful for a novelist. A lot of novelists are snots. They're just mean people. I'm not a terribly skilled stylist, nor do I want to be. I want a lot of people to read one of my stories and go, 'That was pretty cool.'

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.

The concept of the robot encapsulates both aspects of technology. On one hand it's cool, it's fun, it's healthy, it's sexy, it's stylish. On the other hand it's terrifying, it's alienating, it's addictive, and it's scary. That has been the subject of much science-fiction literature.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

I remember having computers at my parents' house growing up. We had different desktop PCs, but my first laptop was an IBM ThinkPad laptop. It was big, bulky, slow and terrible.

But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.

The barrier of communication is terrible if you don't speak the language. You cannot reach a player with a translator.

I think, increasingly, despite what we are being told is an ever more open world of communication, there is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

I am oblique; I think that has to do with my own nature. I like trying to do things which work on many levels, because I think it is terribly important to give an audience a lot of things they might not get as well as those they will, so that finally the film does take on a texture and is not just simplistic communication.

It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.

People think it's terribly sad to spend Christmas alone, but it's no sadder, really, than spending any other day alone, is it?

Christmas means a great deal to me. I was reared in a family that celebrated Christmas to some extent, but I married into a family that celebrated Christmas in a big way. And my wife always made a big thing of Christmas for the children. We have five children, and we had a terrific time at Christmas.