The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good.

You know the sad thing of post-9/11 which was of course horrific was that the city in which I felt completely at home for two decades suddenly people like us - brown people - were looked at as the 'Others.'

When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly everything feels easier.

All of a sudden to get all of this attention and to be away from home and working all the time was hard. I was on planes all the time. I didn't see my friends. I cried a lot. It was quite terrifying.

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

With the perspective afforded by the passage of time where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families innocents going about their lives suddenly and brutally murdered no other day can ever matter as much.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

Getting married for me was the best thing I ever did. I was suddenly beset with an immense sense of release that we have something more important than our separate selves and that is the marriage. There's immense happiness that can come from working towards that.

What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.