John Hodgman

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 have a lot of cultural references that have amassed in my brain like shrapnel over the years that are meaningful to me.

Hosting a TV show is a full-time job in which success is defined by it never ending.

A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.

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.

The most important book on the Internet is, essentially, the Internet.

I am not an Internet superstar.

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

I think that obviously, there is a perverse attraction to a fundamentally changed world or the end of the world. There is a death wish, a perverse death wish. Not just for ourselves, not just for the movie 'Death Wish,' but for the end of all human life.

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.

When you think about it, the end of the world is a little bit like death: We all know it's going to come eventually, and as we get older, we feel we see the signs more and more distinctly.

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.