In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.
One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.
Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
Dating's like going on a job interview. You don't know if you'll get the job, but if you do, you get to see the interviewee naked.
To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is." [The Title Always Comes Last; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words." [Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956]
She should've interviewed Snape," said Harry grimly. "He'd give her the goods on me any day. "Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first arrived at this school...
Because this absolutely insane - the craziest thing I'd ever done. Worse than giving a one-star review, scarier than asking for an interview with an author I'd give my firstborn to eat lunch with, more stupid than kissing Daemon.
Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." [The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]