Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

You're trying to find new ideas in people. I always think to myself, what question I am least comfortable asking the person? And then I make sure I ask it early in the interview.

Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.

I've been asked about this constantly, and I compare it to how if you're walking down the street and some schizo guy comes up to you and vomits on you: You wouldn't be hurt by that, you'd just think it's weird.

I also did an Ozzy piece for him, and so I got hired. Everything happened really fast. I can't give people advice, because everything in my life changed completely in less than a year and it's still not something I am used to.

At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice.

I grew up on a farm, and we didn't have cable and only limited radio stations, so I wasn't inundated with culture the way people in other parts of the country were. But I was really interested in it.

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.

If you're doing an interview, you need conversational tension. After you talk to them, you're not going to have a relationship with them, they're not going to like you, they're not going to be your friend.

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

Even though I wanted to experience all these things I was interested in, I couldn't get them. So I had to think critically and culturally about what was available.

It's just that what's important there is different there than what's important is here. Here, people care that you wrote a book or that you work in the media.

The biggest hurdle to writing Fargo Rock City was that I couldn't afford a home computer - I had to get a new job so I could buy a computer. It could all change though. In five years, I could be back at some daily newspaper, which wouldn't be so bad.

A lot of people have this strategy where if they have a hard question they wait to ask it to the end of the interview because they think the person is going to walk out. But what they have to realize is, is that if the person walks out, they have a pretty successful story.

A whole bunch of months passed and I didn't hear anything and then he emailed and asked if I could do a little piece on POD and Queens of the Stone Age.

To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

In Fargo, they say, well, that's a job. How well do you get paid? For example, for this book I was written about in Entertainment Weekly, and it was kind of cool because my mom asked me if Entertainment Weekly was a magazine or a newspaper.

I keep saying the word "weird" over and over again, but it's the only way I can describe it.

It didn't seem remotely possible. I had no idea how people got those jobs, I didn't know what the steps were, it never even dawned on me. It seemed so outside the realm of possibility.

When you're writing for newspapers you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

I keep saying the word 'weird' over and over again, but it's the only way I can describe it.

Every generation is more influenced by technology which is always changing faster.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.

It is important to have questionable friends you can trust unconditionally.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

The best thing about lying in bed late is that you learn to distinguish between first things and trivia, for whatever presses on you has to prove its importance before it makes you move.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

In so many interviews, they bring up the sexual aspect of the record. I've had some journalists say it sounds like I'm lying down in bed singing with a microphone. It gets so old!

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

I'm not too good at lying still in the sun.

Acting is like lying. The art of lying well. I'm paid to tell elaborate lies.

If anybody says their facelift doesn't hurt, they're lying. It was like I'd spent the night with an axe murderer.

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

I was showing early symptoms of becoming a professional baseball man. I was lying to the press.

I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

There is both a skill factor and an effort factor in dream recall. People can develop dream recall skills, such as lying still in the morning and writing down whatever comes to mind.

We were racing at circuits where there were no crash barriers in front of the pits, and fuel was lying about in churns in the pit lane. A car could easily crash into the pits at any time. It was ridiculous.

As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.