As a freelance writer, I'd be asked to become an expert for various magazines on any subject, whether food or wine or history or the life span of veterinarians. I was completely unschooled in any of these things.
— John Hodgman
People who run for president seriously and people who become president enter a bizarre secret society in which they have had an experience that none of us will ever have.
Comics have a problem, and that is continuity - the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years.
All I can ask from society is that it please stop telling me why I should like sports.
My type of humor is me not caring whether people know what I'm talking about or not.
There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.
I'm a personality - like a George Plimpton who effectively plays himself in a bunch of different roles, or a Paul Lynde-type character.
The few people who ask to have their photographs with me, I almost always say yes, except for a few circumstances, like when my family is around.
It would be rather naive to imagine that Oprah doesn't have an Earth Evacuation Plan. You know Richard Branson does - his is in plain sight.
A lot of media that that I want to consume, I don't want to have to own forever and ever. It's not like real estate.
Hosting a TV show is a full-time job in which success is defined by it never ending.
I know nothing about letting go.
In the '80s and '90s, I was really interested in, moved by, exhilarated by, and troubled by rap in all the ways a white person from Brookline, Massachusetts should be. That was music that was making trouble, and it was interesting and provocative trouble.
People forget how outcast 'They Might Be Giants' can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.
Comedy does offer an avenue to television and film careers for untelegenic people that great drama does not.
The villain of any story is often the most compelling character.
My fame is due to broadcast television.
I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.
I have a lot of cultural references that have amassed in my brain like shrapnel over the years that are meaningful to me.
If you look in the dictionary under 'perfectionist,' you see Henry Selick correcting the definition of perfectionist in the dictionary. I mean, he is so meticulous.
I am amused by cricket because it seems to take longer than baseball and I like that. It seems like a sport I could have made up it - it takes several days to play and everyone wears sweaters. I can't confess to knowing what's going on at all.
A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.
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 know electric knives are excellent for carving turkeys that have had their bones removed and been forced into a mold to shape them. Please note that those turkeys are called hams.
Not as many people watch 'Doctor Who' as watch the Super Bowl, obviously, but the tropes that attract nerds are no longer a secret cult. It's a much larger culture, in the specific sense.
First of all, I wish I could grow a beard.
Most people presume my mustache is not real because it's much darker than my regular hair.
It seems that every generation needs its public, tweedy, literary personality to sell its consumer electronics. To whatever degree I can live up to the Plimptonian legacy, I am humble and proud.
Many people, many girls have tried to teach me the rules to football. And you would think that it would get in my head that way, but I just don't understand it.
For a long time, I would write without music, because I thought it was distracting until I appreciated that it actually unlocks a certain unconscious productivity vault in my mind.
Everyone wants to write a book. Very few people are able to do it.
Well, I always had this desire to celebrate and somehow be a part of things that I thought were really great.
I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to 'truthiness.'
I am not an Internet superstar.
What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum! That's an amusing relic of our past.
All books should be trilogies; I mean I think we all agree on that.
I feel that there is a decision people make to either engage in a legitimately ridiculous process to get your kid into school, or choose not to engage in that so much, and end up finding a nice local school that fits.
My career as a magazine writer was largely prefaced on the idea of curiosity, to go on adventures and weasel my way into the lives of people that I admire.
The most important book on the Internet is, essentially, the Internet.
I would be good for maybe not the center square but an upper square on 'Hollywood Squares.'
Generally speaking, I, like anyone else who does anything publicly, like it when people like what I do, and would like to hear as much.
One can always come up with funny lists and jokes. You know what? I take it back. Not everyone can always come up with funny lists and some jokes. I'm very lucky to have a gift where I can do that pretty ably.
Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It's an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors.
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.
Creating fake facts does require a measure of haphazard research, insofar as they need to not just be possible, but also interesting.
As you know, the thing that I know the least about is the topic of sports.
When I listen to music - I don't particularly do it for fun all that much. It's not a big part of my life, and I'm not really on top of what's happening in the world of music in the way I was when I was a teenager.
Part of the transaction between writer and reader is the pleasure of building a community and encouraging people to play along.
While I understand that all things must come to an end, whether it's a television advertisement or one's life or the world itself, it doesn't make it any easier to deal with.
Any time you try to create an Internet meme, automatic fail. That's like the worst thing you can do.
