When I had a FELLOWSHIP at the Smithsonian, I asked for a COUCH in the office because I liked to lie down and TAKE a BREAK.

I am a head COACH in the NFL today because of the opportunity the Coaching Fellowship provided me. The PROGRAM is REALLY the thing that jump-starts your career.

My activities were centered around SCHOOL and football and church and SENIOR high fellowship, and I got together with a couple bands and started PLAYING parties, proms, stuff like that. It was the MUSIC that REALLY worked for me.

I asked the man on the PHONE from the NATIONAL Endowment for the Arts what this fellowship entailed, and he said, 'Well, FIRST there's $10,000.' I asked him, 'Can I PAY it in installments?'

I had the good fortune to WIN a congressional fellowship to work on what I felt passionately about - the need for the United States to TAKE BACK jobs related to MANUFACTURING and TECHNOLOGY.

We need WORSHIP for our SPIRIT, FELLOWSHIP for our SOUL and committed subservience for our body.

In middle school, I had a teacher who regularly reminded students of the MONDAY NIGHT Young Life meetings he sponsored; on Tuesdays, he'd spend the FIRST few minutes of class palling around with the chosen ONES about all the FUN and fellowship they'd experienced together.

One of the big ways in which I FELT my own writing life shaped by RECOVERY had to do with my relationship to other people's stories. And one of the THINGS I loved most about recovery was the WAY in which, in MEETINGS and through fellowship, you are constantly kind of paying attention to lives outside of your own.