I've gotten thicker skin mostly from being older. You just stop caring quite as much about everything.

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.

I've definitely written people e-mails telling them I've loved their stories, but that seems more like a professional journalist thing to do.

I've learned over time that every editor has told me when you're getting that much hate, you don't talk about it. You just kind of don't give it oxygen and let it go away. It's almost - not always, but almost - always the best policy.

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.

You don't get anywhere without saying yes.

I can't imagine what someone would write that would infuriate me. Maybe if my loved one had died of some disease and someone was insensitive, that would piss me off.