On November 28, 2016, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old legal resident of the United States whose family was originally from Somalia, used a car to mow down a group of people at the Ohio State University.

For much of my adult life, I believed, inaccurately, that I knew the story of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' - that I remembered it from childhood.

At the beginning of 'A Christmas Carol,' Scrooge embodies one of the central tenets of depression: that one has always been this way - and always will be.

Why is there an end of the year? Because the calendar imposes numerical order on time. There is a natural fitness in the celebration of the New Year, a holiday of numbers imposed on things, with lists, as well as with Advent calendars and songs like 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.'

Even in novels where the love relationship isn't the focus, I feel like it's often there, and the background is some barometer of whether this is a happy or sad story or whether this is a successful or unsuccessful life.

When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans live in Istanbul's old city alone. It's hard to imagine their lives in their human totality.

My parents were born into a secular country. They met in Turkey's top medical school, moved to America in the nineteen-seventies, and became researchers and professors.

My parents were educated in the Turkish system and went straight from high school to medical school; my mom, who had skipped a grade, was dissecting corpses at age seventeen. Growing up in America, I think I envied my parents' education. By comparison, everything I did in school seemed so sort of low-stakes and infantilizing.

When you started looking at the life of Tolstoy, there was so much passion and anger and drama surrounding him.

Funny story: I was hanging out with Adam Shankman for Samantha Ronson's birthday, and Lance Bass was there. I don't really know Lance, but he comes over to me and goes, 'Hey, I just wanted to let you know I'm a fan of 'Pretty Little Liars' and I'm rooting for your character.' It was surreal! That's how 'PLL' has changed my life.

I suddenly realized how much I loved her when we attended Alfred Hitchcock's 75th birthday party last August. There was something magical about that night, and it made me see how much she really meant to me.

I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.

I play PC and Xbox games at home, and I just got a PSP as a birthday present.

My birthday is in November, so I think I'm a Scorpio? I'm not even sure!

For my 50th birthday, I got ahold of a new print of 'Saturday Night Fever.' I see it much more as a tough coming-of-age movie than as a disco story.

I never got a chocolate birthday cake; I got a carob one. And when I went to other kids' houses, I was very covetous of things like Cheez Whiz that I'd find in their refrigerators.

My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.

I get letters constantly from all over the world, telephone calls from America, Brazil, Australia, all over, especially on my birthday. A family? I have a huge international family. That's all I need.

The sight of people sleeping on the streets hits us hardest around Christmas and New Year. We see them camped out alone on the freezing concrete, and we think, with a rush of guilt, about heading home to our families and our soft beds.

I use computers and the Internet every day of my life, and yet I have absolutely no idea how they work. I'm like a labrador watching 'The Matrix.'

Non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia can only celebrate Valentine's Day behind closed doors. Apparently, this has led to a huge black market for flowers and wrapping paper.

Whenever someone like a plumber or a mechanic tries to explain something technical to me, I listen for about three seconds before it all just becomes white noise, like Charlie Brown's teacher.

I've never understood why the end of a relationship - especially one involving children - has to immediately signal a descent into hatred and toxicity.

The Clash had a unique, special relationship with Scotland. Perhaps it was something to do with the energy, anger and beauty in their music. In Scotland at that time, there was a lot of to be angry about. And a great need of some energy and beauty.

I returned from my last L.A. visit to find myself tipping the scales like Homer Simpson when he tries to gain enough weight to qualify as disabled to be allowed to work from home. All I was missing was his kaftan and Fat Guy Hat. So, I decided it was time to diet.

I've got a quad copter on my Christmas list, as I suspect quite a few people do.

Census data influences decisions made from Main Street to Wall Street, in Congress and with the Federal Reserve. Not to mention, the American people who look to, and trust, the data the government releases on our nation's unemployment, state of our economy, and health insurance coverage.

My subcommittee will be thoroughly investigating this issue and demanding answers from Census officials on allegations that the Census Bureau is changing the wording of survey questions used to determine our nation's annual report on health insurance coverage.

I think there's no problem getting through the House a pathway to legal status. A pathway to citizenship is going to be tougher, but I think it is potentially doable, if we can show the American people that the border is secure.

Human trafficking robs victims of their basic human rights, and it occurs right under our noses. Many efforts have been focused in other regions of the world, but this is a major problem here at home.

I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.

Ooooh, I love Nashville! It seems like everywhere you walk, there's great music coming out of every wall.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

Christmas is relentless. It's around the clock. I sit with my little ones in front of the TV screen, and we watch movie after movie after movie.

Sometimes I wonder: What are the children thinking? And sometimes I wonder why the hell I'm not buying a tree like the other neighbors. After all, there is no mention in Christianity of Christmas trees, and even if there were - is there any good reason why I shouldn't be buying some red stockings?

Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope left for an Israeli-Palestinian discourse that is built on equality and liberty rather than a fruitless discourse of master and servant.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

I once wrote that the first week in Jerusalem was the hardest week of my life. I was different, other; my clothes were different, as was my language. All of the classes were in Hebrew - science, bible, literature. I sat there not understanding one word. When I tried to speak, everyone would laugh at me.

Israeli independence - what we Arabs call al-Naqba, 'The Catastrophe' - it created Palestinian identity more than anything else.

Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.

I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first; otherwise, they will shoot you.

At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.

Seek home for rest, for home is best.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.

'A Christmas Carol' has been described as the most perfect of Dickens's works and as a quintessential heart-warming story, and it is certainly the most popular.

As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his mind to keep the year free of the pressure of producing monthly installments of yet another long novel.