The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers.

A great deal of creativity is about pattern recognition, and what you need to discern patterns is tons of data. Your mind collects that data by taking note of random details and anomalies easily seen every day: quirks and changes that, eventually, add up to insights.

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.

If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.

Right now I'm reading every fashion magazine I can find. As a shoe designer, I feel it's my responsibility to learn as much as I can about the business, past and present.

My kids have grown up knowing that their mom made a big investment in making sure there was art and language instruction in school and books in the library. Hopefully, they've internalized that.

If you see in all my books, I have two key intentions. One is obviously to entertain and make sure that the reader has a good reading experience. I also try to write on subjects that nobody has dealt with before to make my works different from other page turners.

The scramble to get into college is going to be so terrible in the next few years that students are going to put up with almost anything, even an education.