Quotes from John Hodgman

What more is there to say than it was traumatic, a moment that breaks your life in half? That you never heal from it, and it blankets your life in sadness and fear forever?

you don't actually have to go to Maine. And this is finally great news for me again, because I don't want to see you there. The spirit of Maine has infected me. I gave you your goddamned wood, now get the fuck out of here.

At some point I asked her if she was at peace with the idea of dying. She looked at me like I was stupid and insane. "No," she said. "I want to live." You idiot! would have finished the sentence nicely. It was one of the only times she seemed really disappointed in me. I realized I had learned everything I know about death from movies. There is no peace in dying.

I wish she were alive, but I am grateful for her death. If she were alive, I would likely still be working at the literary agency. For how much longer in my life would I have believed there was time for everything? And by the time I faced my own mortality at the Bookmill in western Massachusetts, how much less would I have done? Her leaving taught me about the worst sadness, one we all must face eventually. I feel lucky I am better equipped to help others who are going through it now.

There is no peace in dying.

Yale was founded before the advent of the fraternity system, so the white men of generations past had to make up their own structures for sub-erotic bonding and pointless tribalism.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don't even notice. It's never any fun, but it can't be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while.

Don't concentrate on becoming a better humor writer, just concentrate on being the best writer that you can become. If you're funny, the work will end up being funny. And if you're not funny, the work will still end up being good. Concentrate on being the most honest writer you can be, and let everything else follow--because it will.

Whatever you may have thought about Hillary Clinton, my daughter watched as a highly experienced and qualified woman lost a job to a neophyte dilettante cartoon character of a white man who openly bragged of molesting women. My daughter isn't dumb. She got the message.

I love my father. It's not his fault that he made up a fear and, in order to make it feel more real to him, gave it to me. I was obviously built to receive it.

As a father now myself, it's sobering to think about how the smallest comments will ripple through your children's lives, with some leaving permanent warps. I must console myself in the certainty that I am helping them and damaging them in other ways I cannot see.

Jonathan is a musician and my best friend. I hope he does not read that last part. I would never call him my best friend to his face. I am from Massachusetts and he is from Connecticut, and New Englanders do not say things like that.

The sun touches Maine first among every state in the US. But Maine likes to confuse people and generally feels conflicted on the subject of light and warmth, so its shattered coastline of necks and points and isles hides from the sun, facing any direction but east.

These violent delights will have violent ends!" My son didn't get the Westworld reference.

never underestimate the cool of your elders. They might be a kickass pair of lesbian superwomen who lived exactly the fuck the way they wanted to, even in what we now consider to be less enlightened times.

When you live in New York or any big city, it is easy to fail at growing up. The city is designed to keep you in a state of perpetual adolescence.

And then he could bring up the sail and let the prevailing winds carry him back to shore, thus making a living entirely on his own, almost without ever having to see or speak to another human ever in his life, which I am convinced is the secret dream of every person in Maine.

This is not to say that there are not Chicagoans. But I would suggest that they are a nomadic people, whose lost home exists only in their minds, and in the glowing crystal memory cells that they all carry in the palms of their hands: a great idea of a second city, lit with life and love, reasonable drink prices at cool bars, and, of course, blocks and blocks of bright and devastating fire.

Maine Humor" is a very specific subset of comedy. It consists mostly of men with flinty, Down East accents giving bad directions to people from away.

My favorite kind of science fiction is post-apocalyptic dystopia. But I just heard at the bar that genre is going out of style. Frankly, that's not a future I want to live in.

these moments you wonder what you are teaching their kids, and your own. Then you realize you are teaching them the truth about America.

This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they wouldn't be rich. Another is that if you're not rich, don't worry about it, because rich people aren't really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage.

I grew to really love the exquisite humiliation of auditioning. When you audition for a role, everything is organized around reminding you that you do not matter. It's the best therapy I ever received.

I am from Brookline, Massachusetts, but I was technically born in a hospital in Cambridge. So now you have a critical answer to many of my internet security questions. And as this book is about being honest with you for once, I will also tell you that my mother's maiden name was Callahan. Enjoy my Amazon Prime account and all my money.