I always keep myself busy. I'm writing. Or I'm creating something. Or I'm doing stuff with the kids. I'm up incredibly early in the morning; I go to bed incredibly late at night.
Being a public defender makes you incredibly paranoid - and I would say with reason - about law enforcement.
I think we're our biggest competition. I think the racetrack's the biggest competition. If we go and race the racetrack and try to go around the racetrack faster than our competition, then that's the goal. I look at it as a competition between us and the racetrack because it's all about lap time.
Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.
If you go to bed at night and think about your day and you haven't laughed very much, then you must jump out of bed and go do something fun.
If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid. That's ridiculous. If I have a gun, what in the hell do I have to be paranoid about?
Don't be a little paranoid; worry about everything, or let it all go.
As you get older, you choose friends based on not only what feels resonant and warm but if they're bringing something to your life. My women friends are incredibly intelligent. There's no posturing, no competition. Especially in Los Angeles, I see pockets of friends who are very competitive, and I think, What is the point? I would rather be alone in bed with a book than have a girlfriend who is like that.
Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one.
But in reading Shakespeare and in reading about Edward de Vere, it's quite apparent that when you read these works that whoever penned this body of work was firstly well-travelled, secondly a multi-linguist and thirdly someone who had an innate knowledge of the inner workings and the mechanisms of a very secret and paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks those three boxes and many more. William of Stratford gave his wife a bed when he died [his second best bed].
The best way not to find the bed too cold is to go to bed colder than the bed is.
I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.
Basically, I am a night owl. My wife is an early bird, so she goes to bed around 9:30, and my kids are in bed about 8. So, if I am home, I will usually start writing about 9:30 and go till about 12:30 or 1:30, depending on what my energy level is.
You should not actually stay in bed for very long awake, because your brain is this remarkably associative device, and it quickly learns that the bed is about being awake. So you should go to another room - a room that's dim. Just read a book - no screens, no phones - and, only when you're sleepy, return to the bed.
Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body.
Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid.