While in the early days of networks, growth was limited by slowness and cost at numerous points - expensive telephone connections, computers that crashed, browsers that didn't work - the rise of the smartphone has essentially changed all that.

Finding your soul begins by discovering our ability to listen! Alternatively, by sharing a smile, a laugh and just by being human to everyone - from friends, colleagues, family, and especially strangers, including those who are not from the same station in life as you.

Our economy, for a long while, has been transitioning from one reliant on industrial strength to one based on digital information. The next step in this transition is a digital economy shaped by connectivity.

A lot of what people are calling 'artificial intelligence' is really data analytics - in other words, business as usual. If the hype leaves you asking 'What is A.I., really?,' don't worry, you're not alone.

It is becoming harder for us to stay on top of the onslaught - e-mails, messages, appointments, alerts. Augmented intelligence offers the possibility of winnowing an increasing number of inputs and options in a way that humans can't manage without a helping hand.

Fog is my weakness, and every time there is low fog, I am out and about with my camera.

Porsche's and Apple's design philosophies are similar. Much like the 356, the original iPhone was about defining a foundation for the future.

I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.

I write longhand on legal pads, about half at home and half in cafes. I drink a lot of water and eat a lot of raw carrots.

I write every day weekdays for about 5 hours, mostly longhand on legal pads. It has gotten neither harder nor easier, sadly or happily.

I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family.

I was standing right behind Marilyn, completely invisible, when she sang 'Happy birthday, Mr. President.' And indeed, the corny thing happened: Her dress split for my benefit, and there was Marilyn, and yes, indeed, she didn't wear any underwear.

You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.

As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The celebrity part rarely touches a director.

My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends.

It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me.

I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine.

The only safe thing is to take a chance.

When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he like Bentleys?

I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define.

My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. I've lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe I've lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending.

Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts.

In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.

It gives me immense pleasure to be trustworthy, faithful, and true - to have the kind of romantic bond that inspires this.

Eating by myself in my own apartment, single and alone again for the first time in many years, I should have felt, but did not feel, sad. Because I had taken the trouble to make myself a real dinner, I felt nurtured and cared for, if only by myself. Eating alone was freeing, too; I didn't have to make conversation.

I've cooked plenty of meals when I was sad, lonely, depressed, angry, bored, and/or under the weather. My primary aim in these circumstances is generally to cheer myself up, to fill my stomach with something warm so I can feel comforted and fed, usually just with a quick soup or an omelet.

Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasn't flown halfway around the world, that didn't travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasn't been sitting in a supermarket's refrigerator case for days.

If there's a rift in the marriage - if someone feels neglected, frustrated, tempted by others, or unsure - then trouble can easily arise.

David Levi is a teacher as well as a chef, and, like most teachers, he loves to talk.

Reminded of what a diet really is, I began eating more slowly, being more conscious of when I was full. I started to enjoy my buckwheat bread with goat cheese and pureed butternut-squash soup as a response to real hunger.

The New Nordic diet originated in 2004, when the visionary chefs Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer called a symposium of regional chefs to address the public's increasing consumption of processed foods, additives, highly refined grains, and mass-produced poultry and meat.

After my experiences with the 5:2 diet, I wasn't interested in a short-term fix that would fail later. I wanted a way of eating that made me lose weight without feeling deprived.

Famously cancer fighting, laden with vitamins, minerals, soluble fiber, and phytonutrients, broccoli and its relatives are among the healthiest ingredients of the human diet.

Most of all, I love unfussy, unpretentious, simple food made with excellent ingredients. If I'm a snob, it's about quality, not cuisine.

There's a certain time of day after sunset when people naturally seem to feel the urge to gather by a fire or a stove or a hibachi or another common source of heat and food, and hunker down together to eat and drink. Call it the blue hour.

Christmas coming means one thing for comedians: office party gigs!

I'm a flirt by nature, and I like flirting with that line of what's passable and what's not, and I genuinely don't believe that I cross it.

I was certainly not a class clown; I confused and angered a lot of people with my sense of humor.

When I was in elementary school, I used to write letters to myself. I'd write letters and go 'Dear Kristen-at-16-years-old, happy birthday. I hope you're doing something.'

My very first acting role was Tiny Tim in 'A Christmas Carol.'

I really like the European carols, and I like that captivating sound that they have that isn't usually in Christmas songs.

What I find is really interesting is the Ear-Nose-Throat doctor thing, which I know would take a lot of work and education, but it's something that really interests me, because it's something that helps people who've had the same problems as me, with the whole hearing and nose congestion and problems with your voice.

I have had fans make me the big picture collages of the photo books; I have had fans send me birthday cakes... sing to me on my voicemail. I have had fans flash me. I have had older fans give me their bras and underwear onstage.

Music is the most powerful form of communication in the world. It brings us all together. Even religion separates us, but a hit record unites us across religious beliefs, race, politics.

I got a chance to have my dream come true, and I wanted to make sure I made the decision as to when I dropped my last album. If I don't feel like this album is an incredible piece of work, then I'm cool with the albums I've done. I don't have to put out another album.

We used to talk about wanting to get some money, but that's when hip-hop was based on your dreams and your fantasy. The whole thing now is the dreams and fantasies were achieved, and you don't want to make it the focal point. You can't keep beating that dead horse.

My mother was always working for a job, so I guess I was always trained that I should have multiple jobs, multiple aspirations. And I remember she had multiple aspirations, always hearing about her dreams and things she did in the past and things she wanted to do.

Man, I just feel blessed... I was in a situation where the only way I could come out of it was by putting my faith in God. No matter how good my lawyers were, no matter how much celebrity I had, everything was just stacked up against me.

I really love what Chuck Berry did with Christmas music, and also the Rat Pack Christmas stuff, which I listened to all through my childhood.

I love making savory stratas for Christmas morning. I get excited about it. It's a polenta strata with homemade bread, with a billion eggs and Parmesan cheese. I'll drizzle truffle oil over the whole thing, which will just destroy people. It's amazing.