I would say aside from Moxie soda bottles and Masonic artifacts, there's nothing I really collect.

When a good friend gives you his or her book, you don't want to read it, because you're afraid that it's not going be what you hope it can be.

Part of the transaction between writer and reader is the pleasure of building a community and encouraging people to play along.

By the time I was writing the second book, my life had changed rather dramatically, thanks to the intervention of television, and I needed to find a way to discuss that. Otherwise the big, fake book would not be true on some level.

I don't wish to brag, but I'm very intelligent.

My career as a magazine writer was largely prefaced on the idea of curiosity, to go on adventures and weasel my way into the lives of people that I admire.

The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work.