Online reaction is very different than real-world reaction.

People would ask if I wanted to host things and I was like, "No, I'm a writer, I don't host things." Just thinking I wouldn't be good at it - which is true - but also just wanting to hold on to some part of my identity.

I'm good at marketing myself through the columns. But compared to other people I know, as far as networking and pushing yourself out there, I'm not very good at that.

When I get real big volumes of hate mail, it's usually because I wrote something poorly. But it's also because some group told people to e-mail me and those people didn't read the article, they read the post about what I wrote about. And they all e-mail me. And they all come around at the same time.

When wine drinkers tell me they taste notes of cherries, tobacco and rose petals, usually all I can detect is a whole lot of jackass.

With a Q&A, you need obviously to keep it snappy.

As journalism dies, I kind of feel like I want some skills besides writing. I'd like to be able to write movies or host TV shows or whatever. Things that I might actually not inherently like quite as much, but are interesting and fun things to do. A good backup plan.