It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade. ↗
Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change. ↗
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words. ↗
I loved it, it's such fun. I like that people are seeing it and then talking about it. Like when I took my son and his friends to see Napoleon Dynamite last year, we spent the next six weeks trying to explain it. ↗
For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature. ↗
I didn't have to wait six years to get my show on the air, worry that someone else had a similar idea, or wait around for notes that took my voice out of the show. ↗
The most solitary I ever felt was when I was living in New York. I used to live in Enrico Caruso's old apartment, and I had a special staircase that took me up to the roof. There was nobody up there. ↗
