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.

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.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.

It's strange that the newspapers don't see a connection between their false revelations about my private life and my need for seclusion and security.

I couldn't have attended half the parties that I was supposed to have been to according to the newspapers. It bothers me.

What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them.

Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.

It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me.

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

I suppose I will go on selling newspapers until at last will come the late night final.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

My name was on the list very early after these announcements were made through the newspapers in Europe.

The votes of 60,000 Floridians were not counted. The Court threw out all 60,00 votes. And that's what the newspapers around the country are counting now.

Don't believe everything that you read in the newspapers.

My reputation was a bit exaggerated. Things were written in newspapers, then copied, then doubled. One of the reasons why I never disclaimed that, was because I found it amusing. But I also constructed such an image for myself in order to gain more of a private life.

And in the Second World War, you didn't just read about it in the newspapers because you weren't allowed to read it in the newspapers. It was all censored, you know? So nobody knew what we were doing.