I want to have enough space to, I don't know, think thoughts. I mean, I just - I don't know that I'm capable of having an exciting, profound thought every week that's worth a column.

People found it unusual to leave a job where you're the boss.

Writing a column, a weekly column for the New York Times, is really tough, and I wasn't prepared for the demands that that involved.

When you're writing for the New York Times someone reading it knows the topic better than you do and knows when you've messed up.

А weekly column is really tough.

Slate is not a political magazine but a lot of what it does is politics.

I sound like an evangelist or something.

It's much easier to hire really great people like that in New York and in Brooklyn in particular, than it is in Washington.

I have blocks of time where I'm working intently on something.

What is Atlas Obscura? So, it was a small digital media company. It's an atlas, it's literally like, an atlas of places, wonderful, unusual places.

The New York Times is the greatest media company around, arguably, and the people at the New York Times know a lot more about making a giant successful media company than I do.

The Gospel is about what Jesus did, not what we have to do.

I like your eyes when you get mad, " I said. "They glow like embers.

Doors close. That's life, but they don't necessarily have to hit my nose, and leave me hanging and shocked every time they do.

I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth.

When fleeing the scene of temptation, do not leave a forwarding address.

Enlightenment is being able to go to your own home and feel comfortable.

Get them while they're young and bend their minds.

Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.