I am not a villain.I'm an only-child narcissist monster, but I wish no ill, nor do I wish for world domination; what a hassle that would be!

My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen.

Even the worst job has its benefits and so does being a professional literary agent, and - I know I said this at the time but I still believe it - the worst job is the one that you know is wrong for you, but you still do it. You're afraid to quit.

It’s been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.

Life may be miraculous in its unlikelihood in the universe, but it would be a fallacy to suggest that its rareness makes it inextinguishable.

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.

By the way, if I have my own cult of personality with my own geodetic dome in western Massachusetts, I will have a hurt yurt for anyone who crosses me.