Comedy does offer an avenue to television and film careers for untelegenic people that great drama does not.

Terry Gross has never had me on her show and you know, it's her show; she sets the agenda and that's not Hodgman. But I'll still listen to it.

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.

A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.

Only the nerds will save the earth.

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.

This is one of the defining sorrows of books: that we cannot see one another.