You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss.

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

Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the Earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.

I made an impulse buy of a house in Maine to make my wife happy and now have gone back into debt and it's all started over for me.

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

I say, if you're going to eat a creature alive, you have to expect some screaming. That is the carnivore's burden.

My whole creative career is a product of the Internet. ...I'll take that back. To some degree. My fascination with cultural esoterica and trivia and so on was well-formed long before I got my first AOL account.