The Quotable Doctorow: Cory Doctorow Interviewed by Chicago Tribune

I'm convinced Cory Doctorow (pictured in a ridiculous costume at right) is filled with good advice on every subject. I've included some of his quotes from a recent interview by Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune.

On e-books:

[P]eople don’t read long works on screens if they have the choice, not because screens aren’t good enough but because computers are too distracting. ...I don’t buy that screens are hard, because otherwise people wouldn’t play World of Warcraft for 20 hours at a stretch or read their Email for 20 hours.

On violence and video games:

[The Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho's] roommate [said], "We always thought he was weird because he never wanted to play video games." Yet it’s still a truism that violent video games must be responsible for Virginia Tech.

On free software advocacy:

They say a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. You know, a free software advocate is a Mac user who's found his data locked in.

On design:

Beautiful things are more functional. ...I’ve become a Normanist.

On successful blogging:

We [at BoingBoing] write headlines that are intended to be parsed well by search engines and by people with RSS readers. So we eschew cleverness. I don’t know if you saw the San Francisco Chronicle the day after the Sept. 11 attacks? It was the plane crashing into the building and, you know, 200-point type, “Bastards,” with an exclamation point. It’s a beautiful cover for print. On the Web, you search for ‘Sept. 11 attacks,” you get 50 search results. The first 49 say, things like “an in-depth analysis of the Sept. 11 attack,” and the 50th one says “Bastards!” You’re not going to click on the 50th one.

On aesthetics:

If you’re not making art that’s meant to be copied, you’re not making art for the 21st Century.

UPDATE: Trimmed it down a bit to make it more readable. Check out the interview for the rest of the great quotes.