My favorite thing is a brand-new project from scratch because you really never know how they're going to come to life. Going back for the third and fourth time to old ones is very gratifying, but it's not my favorite use of my creativity.
Each new book that comes out kind of pulls up the old ones a little bit. The new releases are always going to bolster the old releases.
People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.
My show is constantly evolving... new tricks are added, old ones are dropped... so it stays fresh. But it's the randomly selected participants from the audience that make it fresh and provide some of the best comic relief.
In the case of the Web, each of us has slightly more access to a mass audience - a few more people slide through the door - but Facebook is finally a crude, personal multimedia conglomerate machine, personal nation-state machine, reality-show machine. New gadgets alter social patterns, new media eclipse old ones, but the pyramid never goes away.
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.
Luckily, I discovered ice skating when I was eight and a half years old. There were two wonderful ponds within walking distance of my house. After all the physical activity the summer provided, I craved movement in the cold of winter. I had no skates, so Mom stuffed socks into my brother's old ones.
What happens to people like myself, who have been involved with computing for a long time, is that you begin to see how many of the 'new' ideas are simply old ones coming back into view on the swing of the pendulum, with new and faster hardware to back it up.
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.
To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.
