Tom Junod

“I am not running for president, but I've always known if I ever did run for president - or local dogcatcher, for that matter - the boy I bullied would and should arise as a necessary ghost from my past.”

“For a long time, New Orleans was the classic-rock station of American cuisine, its reputation for flamboyance belying its playlist conservatism.”

“Every celebrity has become a celebrity because of sex and money. But few celebrities like talking about either sex or money; they would rather talk about ideas, or ideals, or solving the world's problems - all against a backdrop of sex and money.”

“I was not a fan. Moreover, I reveled in not being a fan, as though not being able to tolerate Robin Williams was one of the things by which I defined myself.”

“Gluttony is harder than it looks. It's listed as a sin, as something you give in to, when really it's a skill, requiring not just hunger but resilience. That's why the most resilient city in the country, New Orleans, is also the most gluttonous.”

“There is certainly no want of journalistic ambition among the purveyors of what is now called 'long-form,' nor of novelistic technique brought to bear on nonfiction, nor of outrage.”

“Mark Zuckerberg is the product of Facebook just as surely as Facebook is the product of Mark Zuckerberg.”

“I have a mean streak and I am capable of cruelty. This does not mean that I am necessarily mean and cruel; instead, it means that I have to be vigilant about my capacity for cruelty and the mean bone in my body.”

“I was a salesman just out of college, traveling all over American roads in the cause of selling handbags to stores that would in turn sell them to American women, not unlike my father had done.”

“Bob Dylan is either the most public private man in the world or the most private public one. He has a reputation for being silent and reclusive; he is neither.”

“I had heard a lot of stories about my father and celebrities, most of them from his own mouth. In his stories, famous women flirted with him outrageously and helplessly, and famous men sought his company, paid him deference, or took umbrage after being upstaged by him.”

“Music has always enhanced our experience of life on earth by seeming to give us access to something larger than ourselves - the strings of the universe.”

“There's an easy way to tell who won a fight, whether it occurs in a ring or in a schoolyard. Watch it with a second-grade boy and ask him the winner. He'll always know. If he doesn't know, the fight wasn't worth watching.”

“No one would call me a great cook, but over years of cooking, for me, confidence has replaced ambition.”

“And what makes Bob Dylan stories interesting is that the only person who can decide their outcome is Bob Dylan, so you never know how they're going to go.”

“I have about 25,000 songs on my computer and play them mostly on shuffle, which means that the songs I've played the most are the songs that have been on my computer the longest.”

“Food's not done until it yields something, maybe its soul or maybe just its secrets, and how long you're willing to wait for that to happen is a secret all your own.”

“I am the guilty gift-giver, which means that I am a gift-giver who lacks all sense of proportion.”

“The great character actors are now the actors whose work has the element of ritual sacrifice once claimed by the DeNiros of the world, as well as the element of danger - the actors who thrill us by going for broke.”

“The suits are as similar as uniforms, and yet you can tell their individual qualities by how they respond to movement - the good ones ripple like wheat in a field and provide not a show of monotony but rather a spectacle of plenty.”