The process of just being in front of people, having to stand up for your ideas, and ask - and then ask people for money, which is a very hard thing to do.

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.

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.

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.

Irony serves as an alibi for a fetish.

The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.

I've never gone on Facebook and am not sure I understand it. The same goes for Twitter. I have someone sending tweets and pretending to be me, but I don't know why.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

No matter what I have done, no matter how I have failed, no matter how week I have been, no matter how inadequate I am, God has not changed. He has not failed.

Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it

The Beatles gave me everything. Especially Paul McCartney. I adore him.

In a lot of ways, it's not the money that allows you to do new things. It's the growth and the ability to find things that people want and to use your creativity to target those.

As far as advice goes, an ex-father in law of mine once gave me the best advice I ever heard. He said, "Take my advice and do what you want to." So with that, go on.