"That’s what I wanted to do -- write a book about horse racing at its low end, in an era considerably before the present moment, and see if there wasn’t an open niche for that. By god, it seems to have happened."

"It is what the internet lures out of us -- hubris, daydreams, avarice, obsessions -- that makes it so potent and so volatile. TV's power is serenely impervious; it does all the talking, and we can only listen or turn it off. But the internet is at least partly us; we write it as well as read it, perform for it as well as watch it, create it as well as consume it. Watching TV is a solitary activity that feels like a communal one, while the internet is a communal experience masquerading as solitude."