John Hodgman Quotes & Sayings

First of all, I wish I could grow a beard. — John Hodgman

The only time I've ever been mistaken for someone else is - and this arguable still - when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, "You look a lot like that guy from computer ads" and I said, "There is a reason because I am that guy," and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, "That's a funny joke, but you really do look like him." He thought I was not me. — John Hodgman

I made an impulse buy of a house in Maine to make my wife happy and now have gone back into debt and it's all started over for me. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

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

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

What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum! That's an amusing relic of our past. — John Hodgman

I am amused by cricket because it seems to take longer than baseball and I like that. It seems like a sport I could have made up it - it takes several days to play and everyone wears sweaters. I can't confess to knowing what's going on at all. — John Hodgman

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports. — John Hodgman

Everything we make in life, eventually, is sold for a dollar or a penny or given away; — John Hodgman

Once you're out in a place where there's one sheriff for the county, people have to learn how to get along with each other and that means going to the dump illegally and dumping your garbage and hoping the guys don't call you on it and being terrified of this to your core until you realize after many years that the guys at the dump don't really care where your garbage is coming from. — John Hodgman

Comics have a problem, and that is continuity - the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years. — John Hodgman

I am not an Internet superstar. — John Hodgman

I had some very, very fond memories of the people I worked with and the authors I worked with - and I won't mention any names - but as I have been traveling through rural Maine over the past few weeks, one of my favorite things to do is to go into bookstores on the side of rural routes and paw through the old copies of Tom Clancy and Trevanian books they have in there for weird old 1970s thrillers that I haven't read yet. — John Hodgman

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

Writing for me always requires trickery. Tricking myself into sitting down, letting words tumble out until you find the good ones. t's sort of a trance. And when a piece is done, I have little memory of how I wrote it, and zero confidence I'd ever be able to do it again. — John Hodgman

I feel that there is a decision people make to either engage in a legitimately ridiculous process to get your kid into school, or choose not to engage in that so much, and end up finding a nice local school that fits. — John Hodgman

There is no ritual that enhances creativity other than just starting. — John Hodgman

You know the old saying: "History is written by the winners. And also, the team of hand-picked historians that the winner keeps hidden away in an underground bunker". — John Hodgman

The fact is I'm very self-similar. — John Hodgman

You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss. — John Hodgman

Traffic counting was very boring and cold to sit out on the streets of New Haven in five pairs of pants - well, that's an exaggeration; it was three pairs of pants - in November for hours and hours clicking buttons counting which cars go left, right, and forward. — John Hodgman

I've only ever been mistaken for myself. People draw a lot of comparisons to all of the round-faced, mustached men of entertainment that make me cringe and sick to my stomach about how the world really sees me and they're right. — John Hodgman

When you're sitting down and you're blocked and you just start writing and something in your mind just clicks, you start seeing connections and so on, you really do feel like you're channeling something else. — John Hodgman

I say, if you're going to eat a creature alive, you have to expect some screaming. That is the carnivore's burden. — John Hodgman

Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust. — John Hodgman

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

Creating fake facts does require a measure of haphazard research, insofar as they need to not just be possible, but also interesting. — John Hodgman

The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work. — John Hodgman

This is not to say 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 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. — John Hodgman

Tonally, there was no discussion; I just don't know any other way to do it. I don't want to make people feel bad, and I don't want to make their problems into a joke. I do love telling people when they're right and wrong, but for the most part, it was always going to be about real fights where people have a real difference of opinion and a real dispute. I want to make jokes, but I also want to make a decision that is fair. — John Hodgman

It was inevitable that in the proliferation of media and media channels and the natural debasing of authority that comes when you make an expert of someone who knows a few things and can be on television and you put the word "expert" underneath them, that is to say me, then eventually the very concept of expertise itself would become meaningless. — John Hodgman

My type of humor is me not caring whether people know what I'm talking about or not. — John Hodgman

Many people, many girls have tried to teach me the rules to football. And you would think that it would get in my head that way, but I just don't understand it. — John Hodgman

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

If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. All that has been decided for them in advance. All they need to do is follow the orders given to them before the game, showing them where to run and how to violently deploy the meat of their bodies against the meat that is running at them. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the "coach" or "yelling surrogate dad who will never be happy. — John Hodgman

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

We have all been empowered by the web: everyone with a keyboard can now effectively broadcast to a national audience. In a sense, it puts each of us on the same footing as the major media conglomerates, except for AOL, who now apparently own all our thoughts and teeth. — John Hodgman

One can always come up with funny lists and jokes. You know what? I take it back. Not everyone can always come up with funny lists and some jokes. I'm very lucky to have a gift where I can do that pretty ably. — John Hodgman

I think in American culture, we put value on economic success but tell people you don't have to be economically successful to be happy. — John Hodgman

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

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. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

We cannot wholly rely, as though it were Medieval times, [on the notion that] the only reality is what we see in front of us. There are germs. There are changes that are happening in our planet's ecology that are happening over such a long period of time that we cannot see the changes. — John Hodgman

This is something that the nimblest standup comedians learn, over time, to handle gracefully. They'll go between prepared material, then they'll respond to what's happening in the room and weave it back into the prepared material and so on. — John Hodgman

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

The nice thing about live performance is that I've never, ever been let down. Partly I'm lucky that my audience self-selects itself. Generally they know what they're in for, and generally we all just like each other and get along. But I always find one or two or a dozen really interesting people in the audience who make the show different. And that's one of the things I really like about performing. — John Hodgman

Most people presume my mustache is not real because it's much darker than my regular hair. — John Hodgman

I have an unfortunate compulsion. I really would rather not do it, as it is very nerve-wracking and un-fun. But when it works, there is nothing like it. — John Hodgman

Why certain political classes want purposefully to keep Americans in a state of perpetual debt and uncertainty and why certain people don't want a middle class - because middle class creates a certain happiness. You know what I mean? — John Hodgman

I'm a personality - like a George Plimpton who effectively plays himself in a bunch of different roles, or a Paul Lynde-type character. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

Do not listen to the killjoys who tell you never to eat oysters in months that do not contain the letter R: May, June, July, August, Octoba. You know. — John Hodgman

When I listen to music - I don't particularly do it for fun all that much. It's not a big part of my life, and I'm not really on top of what's happening in the world of music in the way I was when I was a teenager. — John Hodgman

Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It's an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors. — John Hodgman

If you look in the dictionary under 'perfectionist,' you see Henry Selick correcting the definition of perfectionist in the dictionary. I mean, he is so meticulous. — John Hodgman

I really wouldn't censor myself. But because it was on such a slower scale, I would throw things out, and I indulged the personal stuff as little flashes of truth. Little in-jokes for anyone who was paying particular attention. — John Hodgman

Just because you see an iceberg does not mean that there isn't global warming. — John Hodgman

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; — John Hodgman

I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated. — John Hodgman

Just a small-scale cult of personality, maybe raise a geodetic dome out in western Massachusetts and make people wear jumpsuits and give all their possessions to me. — John Hodgman

So I am a product of the Internet, and to some degree a product of this sensibility of constant cultural reference. — John Hodgman

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

It's been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica. — John Hodgman

Even in my own life, there are memories I have that are difficult to explain - happenings that are so odd and unaccountably weird, that it is difficult to imagine they were not the result of prolonged and frequent contact with aliens throughout my life. — John Hodgman

By the time I was writing the second book, my life had changed rather dramatically, thanks to the intervention of television, and I needed to find a way to discuss that. Otherwise the big, fake book would not be true on some level. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

One of the things about crowd work that's so exciting is when you discover a character in the audience who's interesting or funny, who you can vibe off of. If someone's got a weird job that you can make reference to throughout, or you can bring that person onstage - humiliate them, or celebrate them! You can put people in conversation with one another. The best is when something that they're doing can reflect back on something that you're doing. — John Hodgman

All I can ask from society is that it please stop telling me why I should like sports. — John Hodgman

Specificity is the soul of narrative. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting. — John Hodgman

I would definitely make eggs for the rest of my life if I could. — John Hodgman

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

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. — John Hodgman

Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the Earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them. — John Hodgman

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. — John Hodgman

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. — John Hodgman

John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald meet in hell and team up to assassinate Satan. — John Hodgman

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

It would be rather naive to imagine that Oprah doesn't have an Earth Evacuation Plan. You know Richard Branson does - his is in plain sight. — John Hodgman

I've made my evolutionary purpose and had children. I don't care if anybody likes me, I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to do a whole comedy show about swimming in the loathsomely cold waters of Maine. — John Hodgman

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

We estimate that there are perhaps 20,000 prehistoric hunter-gatherers frozen up in those glaciers. Now, if they simply thaw and wander around, it's not a problem, but if they find a leader - a Captain Caveman, if you will - we'll be facing an even more serious problem. — John Hodgman

My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen. — John Hodgman

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

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

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. — John Hodgman

I never stopped feeling abject terror until I got on television and went on a national ad campaign and realized, "I will be able to feed my children. I have somehow averted the destiny that awaited me, which is endless, crippling debt forever." — John Hodgman

I know nothing about letting go. — John Hodgman

Not as many people watch 'Doctor Who' as watch the Super Bowl, obviously, but the tropes that attract nerds are no longer a secret cult. It's a much larger culture, in the specific sense. — John Hodgman

Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying. — John Hodgman

From a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that. — John Hodgman

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books. — John Hodgman

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road." — John Hodgman

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

I realized that even in a world of proliferating media venues, online and in print, and on TV and on countless cable channels, the idea that I could be considered an expert on chronic knee pain was I think troubling for society, but very exciting for me. — John Hodgman

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke. — John Hodgman