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The bulk of my calls are from agents who are letting you know about material that's coming your way.

It's usually, my people speak to your people and then they speak around each other and trade calls for weeks.

The telephone is a 100-year-old technology. It's time for a change. Charging for phone calls is something you did last century.

I never was for telephones. Just don't like them, that's all. Anybody wants to talk to you, they can come to see you.

I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didn't have any phone service and we didn't have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed.

I won't divulge the details, but there's a way to call somebody's phone and have whatever number you want appear on the caller I.D. so that the call you're making appears to be coming from someone else.

When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines as a favor to those they deemed worthy. If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman or an influential journalist, or a doctor or something, you might have a telephone.

You have to step up when your number is called.

I'm old, I'm used to crummy service, I'm trained to get crummy service. To me, the fact I can get through to a call centre and then hold for 15 minutes, I don't get that upset. My kids won't. They want to know the answer to their question now. As a company you have to provide an answer to that consumer.