Everyone feels like they would love to be a really cool bartender in a really cool bar, but you're still surrounded by people who want to destroy themselves with alcohol. When you look at it that way, it's not that much fun.

I don't care if I tell that story and John Roderick gets up afterward and yells, 'I hope you enjoyed the white privilege, mortality comedy of John Hodgman!' That's me!" I'm going to play a sad Handsome Family song at the end and I guarantee you everyone is going to love it because, sometimes, you need a grown man or woman to tell you what you like.

A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.

So much of creativity is the feeling that you're either getting a gift from some other dimension or some other part of yourself.

I was always fascinated with the way that things pop on the Internet - the ways you build communities and create little stories and ideas that people play around with and send back to you.

There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

There is a need for expertise, for real expertise. I'm not doing much to help that cause, but I think we can find the healthy balance between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. Jocks and nerds may come together, I believe it.