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.

You don't get anywhere without saying yes.

You can get away with stuff in a one-page story that you can't get away with in a book.

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.

Being in New York and having worked at Time Out New York and then being at Time, living in New York for a long time has helped because I know everybody. And they're the people who call me and give me jobs. So that kind of real networking, which is just living in a place and having jobs where people around you are extremely successful, has helped me tremendously.

You don't really want an army of people making individual decisions. And I don't think I completely understood that until people gave me examples of what happens when your army takes over your government and it's like, "Oh, yeah, I guess you can't really have people make individual moral decisions."

I always thought that being at Time and tweaking your bosses and exploiting your expense account was just fun. Just joyous.