John Hodgman Quotes

I have learned that newborn infants roll their eyes around and move their heads and their arms in short jerky spasms. And if you homeschool them, they will stay this way forever.

When a good friend gives you his or her book, you don't want to read it, because you're afraid that it's not going be what you hope it can be.

All books should be trilogies; I mean I think we all agree on that.

Any time you try to create an Internet meme, automatic fail. That's like the worst thing you can do.

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

Part of the transaction between writer and reader is the pleasure of building a community and encouraging people to play along.

I had the pleasure of listening to Rickie Lee Jones' Flying Cowboys album on audio cassette, which had just come out at that time because I am an elderly man.

Well, I always had this desire to celebrate and somehow be a part of things that I thought were really great.

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.

First of all, I wish I could grow a beard.

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.

People like what they like. They're gonna do what they're gonna do.

I would be good for maybe not the center square but an upper square on 'Hollywood Squares.'

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.

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.

Everything we make in life, eventually, is sold for a dollar or a penny or given away.

My fame is due to broadcast television.

I believe that the federal government should be laying down broadband like Eisenhower laid down interstates.

There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

My memories of literary agenting are of a very happy time and there are surprising reminders of it coming back now.

I know nothing about letting go.

My candidacy is a compelling argument for my candidacy. I want to be President.

I don't watch television. And certainly not ads; I loathe advertising.

I think for the foreseeable future, the truth is going to be awful and funny all at the same time.

I suspect that when the truth ceases to be heartbreakingly funny, we will be in a better place and a happier society over all.

Only the nerds will save the earth.

The reality is that there is an enormous value to gut-check instinctive decision-making in the world that is not hampered by reams and reams of research and complexity.

I naturally own a lot of very old magazines. And I enjoy going to old magazines because the advertisements in those magazines tended to have thousands of words of copy in them.

I don't wish to brag, but I'm very intelligent.

Panic is an incredibly catalyzing creative force. And almost out of sheer necessity, I found I had to talk about myself and my real life as it is effectively lived by me.

Sports is a bloodless rehearsal of confrontation, and everyone shakes hands or high fives or fist bumps at the end to show that everything is okay.

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

I'm not a particularly religious person, but that feeling of getting transmissions from someplace else, even if it's from your own consciousness, is very, very real. To me, at least.

So much of creativity is the feeling that you're either getting a gift from some other dimension or some other part of yourself.

I am a marginally employed person who can escape with my school teacher wife to the waters of Maine for much of the summer.

Maine's motto is "Vacationland," but as far as I'm concerned, it should be, "Maine: Putting the 'spite' in hospitality since 1820."

Elwyn Brooks White was a very Maine personality which is, "I hate everyone and everyone stay away from me."

As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.

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.

Terry Gross. I would rush home from high school to listen to Terry Gross.

It's not a secret family like I have a beautiful, gorgeous wife in Tokyo; I have another mom and dad. I'm the kid and I have another mom and dad in Atwater Village, Los Angeles.

I think, as we all learn as a child, you have to learn to tolerate ambiguity better and I'm still terrible at it and I hate it; even the word ambiguity makes me sick to me stomach.

You wouldn't want to live a life in which you are loved or approved by all people on Earth or even within your own geodetic dome full of your jumpsuited followers.

I'm not sure if that answers the question and I have absolutely no problem with any major world religion on Earth.

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.

I am someone who values knowledge, actual knowledge. I also value stories and fiction a whole lot, and that's where the fake knowledge comes in.

I was always fascinated with the way that things pop on the Internet - the ways you build communities and create little stories and ideas that people play around with and send back to you.

I am not an Internet superstar. I am, ironically perhaps, the most old media superstar of all time. My fame is due to broadcast television.

To want to become the President is, I think, such a bizarre ambition that it is automatically deranging.