I can't imagine everyone on the planet would want to hear something from me. If I thought they'd listen, I'd probably ask them to try to be nicer to each other, to try to be less scared of their differences.

I can have fairly crippling self-criticism. It doesn't really put me in a vulnerable state, I just get glum and intolerable, but it certainly is a vulnerability.

David Foster Wallace is a big idol of mine. His writing is so clear that for years I'd read him and think, My God, he is actually writing the way I think. He's describing the thoughts in my head. And then I realized, No, wait. He's just such a good writer, so transparent and articulate, that when he describes his thoughts, I think they're my own.

My best ideas almost always come from winding up in unexpected places and stumbling across things I never could have imagined in advance.

Actually, here is something I'm passionate about that, looking around me, seems like the world at large must not care about as much as I do: craft.

If some dude I'd never heard of managed to broadcast a platitude like that to the whole globe, I'd probably just feel like I was being spammed.

I'm very active in pushing for net neutrality and an open Internet. There are countless other causes I support personally and privately, but I try to keep my public activism fairly focused.