I think that I'm reaching a point in my life and in my career where soon it will be important for me to get out of the way and let younger, hungrier, more interesting people do what it is that I do. Maine is a wonderful place to hide, because no one ever looks for you there. And the goal of every person in Maine, whether native or from away, seems to be to mitigate as possible all human interaction. So it's a good place to disappear in.

I still have a fondness for books. Many a time I will be antiquing, and I'll say, 'What's that old-timey curio over there? What is that, a candlestick telephone, one of those old pull-chain toilets? Oh no, it's a book. I used to help make those things! I will buy it and use it to decorate my chain of casual family-dining restaurants.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust.

Why certain political classes want purposefully to keep Americans in a state of perpetual debt and uncertainty and why certain people don't want a middle class - because middle class creates a certain happiness. You know what I mean?

Once you're out in a place where there's one sheriff for the county, people have to learn how to get along with each other and that means going to the dump illegally and dumping your garbage and hoping the guys don't call you on it and being terrified of this to your core until you realize after many years that the guys at the dump don't really care where your garbage is coming from.

A lot of media that that I want to consume, I don't want to have to own forever and ever. It's not like real estate.