Do not listen to the killjoys who tell you never to eat oysters in months that do not contain the letter R: May, June, July, August, Octoba. You know.

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.

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.

What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum! That's an amusing relic of our past.

I am someone who values knowledge, actual knowledge. I also value stories and fiction a whole lot, and that's where the fake knowledge comes in.

When you're sitting down and you're blocked and you just start writing and something in your mind just clicks, you start seeing connections and so on, you really do feel like you're channeling something else.

It was inevitable that in the proliferation of media and media channels and the natural debasing of authority that comes when you make an expert of someone who knows a few things and can be on television and you put the word "expert" underneath them, that is to say me, then eventually the very concept of expertise itself would become meaningless.