The death of any man aged 56 is very sad for his widow and family. And no one would deny that Steve Jobs was a brilliant and highly innovative technician, with great business flair and marketing ability.
The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: 'Moby-Dick.'
I was a disadvantaged child from a non-educated family, yet I had the advantage of being in the company of great teachers.
Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.
The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.
We discovered a mechanism which is like the garbage machine of the body. We need to remove damaged proteins and create new ones in their place, and we discovered the machine that does this.
I'm a chubby middle-aged white guy with short hair. I think that's it, really. I kind of have a look. Right now, I'm not fat enough to be the fat friend, but I'm not thin enough to be the leading man, so I look like a cop.
I've found that when everyone rallies behind a cause, and when they learn their effort can contribute something bigger, they get engaged.
I grew up with the idea of the cyborg and the robot, but at the same time I felt this intense disconnection between the things I was engaged with and inspired by in terms of fun and play. It seemed like paintings and drawings were so static.
You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.
