Daniel Mallory Ortberg

“I have a lot of faith in the power of joking to make something thoughtful.”

“Everyone wants to be liked; everyone wants approval. No one likes being ignored.”

“I have fun going on Twitter and the Internet. I feel safe and comfortable, and I wish everyone could feel that way.”

“Usually my writing is very over the top and bombastic and very, like, 'I'm amazing! Look at me!'”

“Did you know that, pound for pound, the moose is the leanest ruminant on Earth? It's true. Moose are very in tune with their natural surroundings.”

“When I was twenty years old, I had gum grafts put in.”

“In the hands of a passive-aggressive person who wants to abdicate responsibility for things, texting is a great tool. You can really go nuts.”

“It's an unfortunate reality of life that toxins are constantly building up in our bodies.”

“We went to church twice a week. My parents were employed in ministry; we prayed before dinner. We rollerbladed in the summer. We were allowed to watch the 'Simpsons.' I fought with my younger brother over Legos.”

“In my final year of attending a Christian sports camp in rural Missouri, the year before I started high school, they began to offer an elective Bible study group for young Christians who wanted a chance to read in the afternoons instead of learn to water-ski.”

“I'm really not a journalist, and I don't do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I'll write about something that's going on recently, but I really don't do a ton of stuff that's tied to current events.”

“Usually, the first thing I do when I wake up is I start working, so I often won't start the day by reading anything because I like to minimize my 'commute' as much as possible. I wake up, open my laptop and start working in bed.”

“I love 'Jane Eyre,' and I love the Bronte sisters. I actually didn't read any of them until I was in college, so I don't have quite the same connection with them that I think a lot of women do.”

“The most successful Subway customers, of course, are the ones who can't keep their hands off their sandwich. Join your artist in the sandwich assembling process. That sneeze guard is a suggestion. That sneeze guard is trying to intimidate you into staying on the customer's side of the partition.”

“Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.”

“Eighty per cent of my output is 'Mallory clowns on the Western canon,' and I'm happy to be that person.”

“Anything where I get to write a lot of jokes and have a lot of creative control - that's all I want.”

“I attended an evangelical Christian university on the outskirts of suburban Los Angeles and by the time of my graduation was neither evangelical nor Christian.”

“There's no specific mission statement for the 'Toast.'”

“After I do my first writing of the day, I will generally look at Twitter and Google News - and that's my big media secret. I look at Twitter and I look at Google because they pull all the headlines from other websites.”