Yesterday I got back from my trip in the room was a real mess, paper, glass, photo albums, everything...

Sometimes I see you in the waterfalls and the clouds and always you have that real happy look on your face like when I come back from being away and we are about to kiss for the first time in months.

In the morning, when Nacchan came back from jogging, and Hansan came to the sofa...

When he came back to our room after the fireworks, he said he can't see her as a woman.

(Laughter) OK, this was having a lot of issues for me, I was having a lot of issues at my job and I'd come home every day from work and my wife would ask me the same question.

I was talking to a friend of mine, he said, "Man, I come home from work, drawers are open, clothes hanging outside the drawers, the kids are still in their pajamas...

Two weeks ago, I just got back from Papua New Guinea where I went up to the highlands -- very isolated tribes of subsistence farmers living as they have lived for millennia.

I went home from work early one day with what I thought was the flu, and less than 24 hours later I was in the hospital on life support with less than a two percent chance of living.

About an hour after she had arrived home, after I'd sent her home, she collapsed and her family called 911 and the paramedics brought her back to the emergency department where she had a blood pressure of 50, which is in severe shock.

This is Maezza, and when she was seven years old, she came home from school one day, and like I do every single day, I asked her, "What did you do today?"

I grew up in Bihar, India's poorest state, and I remember when I was six years old, I remember coming home one day to find a cart full of the most delicious sweets at our doorstep.

And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just come home from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thing called conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a way to say, "Come back to me.

(Laughter) And I met with this editor, and I left New York for a contract for my first book, "Good Night, Monkey Boy, " which was published on June 12, 2001.

I. I. Rabi, a Nobel laureate, said that when he was growing up in New York, all of his friends' parents would ask them "What did you learn in school?" at the end of a day.

Now that's a method that starts from observations and experiments and moves to generalizations about nature called natural laws, which are always subject to revision or rejection should new evidence arise.

But that was the end of the bad news, because when Derek came home from the hospital, his family decided to employ the redoubtable nanny who was going to look after you, Derek, really for the rest of your childhood.

Meanwhile, independent groups of Norman knights traveled to the Mediterranean, inspired by tales of pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.

The photo montage consisted of images of South Korean students burning American flags, holding signs that said, "Yankee go home. Son of a bitch, " and below that were flag-draped coffins coming back from Vietnam.

As I turned to walk away from the shrine, I drank in the warm summer air, and I watched an eagle turn lazy circles high above.

Getting back to that snowy night in Montreal, when I got back from my trip, I had my contractor install a combination lock next to the door, with a key to the front door in it, an easy to remember combination.

I was 27, and I was home from Barcelona, and I was visiting my parents for Christmas, and I was cooking dinner with my mother, and we were alone in the kitchen.

And in the checklisted childhood, we say we just want them to be happy, but when they come home from school, what we ask about all too often first is their homework and their grades.

Playing doubles in Japan really relieves me of all my anxiety, and at the end of an evening, I notice everybody is filing out in a more or less equal state of delight.

The bedraggled crew of Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts were returning from their hard-won quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

You see that your mettle as an athlete is not only tested on race day but every single day, when the sport demands that you get up at 4:30 in the morning, swim for two hours, go to school, come back, swim for three hours, go home, eat and sleep.

And the feeling after these meetings is always the same: my heart is beating like a drum, because you never know if they've actually bought your story, or they're going to start following you to see who you really are.