I count myself as one of millions of Americans whose life simply would not be the same without the libraries that supported my learning.

The American preoccupation with the law, which is certainly not past, was at its zenith in 1995. The 1980s, the late 1980s, had sort of begun to percolate up to public consciousness this enormous interest in the law.

I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.

The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal. It's not up to one company - it's up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down so we can move the entire industry forward.

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis.

Coaches give you too much information. I've been allowed to develop that intuitive ability in my career and lifetime.

My parents don't really understand my career. They don't really bring it up that much.