I think a bigger difference with social media is going to be things like the impact Instagram will have for historians. For the longest time, we had no images of the past. And then when we had the advent of the camera, we had a record of the things people chose to photograph, which, for a while, were portraits of your family, a new building we built, or a really big horse. Well now we have images of everything. That will be the biggest difference I think - that we will have a visual record of this reality in a way that will be completely covered.

Different critics go to different lengths to disagree with that sentiment, but ultimately, they're the person experiencing this art, and whatever judgment or taste they use is internal, and says more about them than about the record they're writing about.

The problem a lot of writers have is that they really enjoy people saying, "You're brilliant." They let their self-perception be dictated by reader response. But if you're going to let other people make you feel good, you're going to end up feeling bad when they say the opposite. You've got to be a cultural stoic. Then you won't be devastated by people who respond negatively. Of course, the downside is that it sort of stops you from being able to enjoy people liking your work.

Sure there's a percentage of people who are like, "It snowed in May. I don't believe in climate change." Well, that's crazy, but that's always gonna be the case. I suppose if climate change happens much faster than even the dire experts predict, then I suppose opinions will change.

I am of the opinion, and have been for a long time, that any kind of big technological move is almost always positive in the short term but inevitably somewhat negative in the long term. And I think there are many examples of this in every possible context.

Let's say Donald Trump loses but it's close. That could change the whole way the job of being a politician shifts - that to succeed in politics, you have to be a caricature of what a politician is supposed to be like.

My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.