At our core, we are a content company. That content has to be the very best. You can't be a company of this size and be doing what everybody else is doing.

I'm not a very patient person.

It doesn't make any sense for us to do a scripted series if it's not going to be big, so we have to be really disciplined about them.

Taking action against a show because of one individual's behavior could put hundreds of jobs in jeopardy.

I'm enormously proud that I can do a deal with the National Women's Soccer League to showcase the power and passion of women athletes as positive role models, not only for my daughter but also for my son.

There is a lot of content out there for the female demographic.

Celebrating failure is key. Half of what we do fails, at least.

We have to take a really close look at making sure that we are more surgical and more tailored in dealing with the production community and our producing partners.

I think that the strategy around FYI is really a corporate strategy, and that's that every one of our brands that we invest in have to matter and that we need to commit to building brands and investing in those brands, or we need to get out of that business.

In the media business and as a creative executive, if you don't take risks, you're dead in the water. Calculated risk-taking is essential for success.

You can't manage the creative process on a quarterly basis. The way we're structured has really helped us grow.

The History brand has long been a supporter of not only our troops but organizations that support our troops.

We knew in our gut that History needed to be more than a timeline.

I think the culture and DNA of our organization is to take risks.

Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.

Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.

Progress is seldom simple; it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat.

Just because we eat together does not mean we eat right: Domino's alone delivers a million pizzas on an average day.

Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave.

Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson.

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of church and state - so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire, and no one had a concordance to explain why it was all happening at once.

Pain is the most private experience, but its causes, whether natural or man-made, demand public accounting.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

It's funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they've changed completely.

In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion.

If you want to humble an empire, it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe.

I come from a family of teachers, and I believe ideas matter; the good ones deserve reverence, and the bad ones, defiance.

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school.

Even if it wasn't always morning in America during the years of his presidency, Reagan's eagerness to insist that it was tapped into a longing among voters. They didn't want to picture themselves turning down their thermostats and buttoning up their cardigans. They wanted to strut again. Reagan opened his arms and said, 'Walk this way.'

A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon.

Once a conflict has dragged on for a decade, most people are tired of war - and the troubles that flow from it.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together.

New Orleans lives by the water and fights it, a sand castle set on a sponge nine feet below sea level, where people made music from heartache, named their drinks for hurricanes and joked that one day you'd be able to tour the city by gondola.

While many alien species are harmless, others pose expensive threats to seas and fields and forests.

Power is a tool, influence is a skill; one is a fist, the other a fingertip.

Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager.

Emotional life grows out of an area of the brain called the limbic system, specifically the amygdala, whence come delight and disgust and fear and anger.

There was a time when researchers imagined that Plan B, or the morning-after pill, might become not an emergency form of contraception but a routine one; women would take it once a month to induce a period and never even know whether they had gotten pregnant.

After the 1960s and '70s, there were real doubts about whether a mortal man could handle the country's highest office. It had destroyed Johnson, corrupted Nixon, and overwhelmed Ford and Carter.

Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.

As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it.

Some people are born strong or stretchy, or with a tungsten will.

Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season - and so memories stir and startle.

Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well.

Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.

The leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 worldwide is not accident or violence or disease; it is complications from pregnancy. Girls under 15 are up to five times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well.

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.

On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere.

High achievers, we imagine, were wired for greatness from birth. But then you have to wonder why, over time, natural talent seems to ignite in some people and dim in others.

On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.