Fun is not the same thing as fulfillment.

Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom.

When I play too many video games I begin to feel chubby-minded, caffeinated, bad.

Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer-so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.

Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.

We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.

To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.