Turn off your phone and your BlackBerry.

“Unless you have children or you’re waiting for news about a liver transplant,” John Tesh says “it’s too tempting to keep checking who is calling each time it rings, and your date might just think its another man or woman. Same thing goes for your BlackBerry. It’s disrepectful to divide your attention between the person in front of you and a beeping little piece of plastic. It also says, ‘You’re only semi-important to me.’”

“I wasn’t even sure that I could write a book.”

“I’m a night owl, so I usually wrote at night after my Senate day was over, and after my family was asleep–from 9:30 p.m. or so until 1 a.m. I would work off an outline–certain themes or stories that I wanted to tell–and get them down in longhand on a yellow pad.” In The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama urges, “Get involved in an issue that you’re passionate about.”

“There is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.” Malcom Gladwell, whose new book is an instant phenomenon. His “Tipping Point” became an everyday catch phrase. And his “Blink” explored “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.”