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

I have no skills. I mean, I can make jokes, I'm pretty good at talking to people on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I can figure out what makes a pretty good story, and I can make eggs really well.

More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.

John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald meet in hell and team up to assassinate Satan.

I used to enjoy the anonymity of being a literary figure and occasionally a public radio figure.

As you know, the thing that I know the least about is the topic of sports.

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road."