How To Interview Quotes & Sayings

How grateful are we
how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon. — William Makepeace Thackeray

If you lived in the wild, you'd need to know how to make fire to survive. But you live in an urban world, and you need to make money. That means you need a job, and the only way to get a job is by turning a job interview into a job offer. — Martin Yate

watching TV when your children are around, snacks, exercise, and bringing their own kids to the job matter a lot to some families but not to others. Of course the big ones are yelling at a child, ignoring a child, lying, stealing, cursing, and any form of physical or verbal abuse. Whatever you feel strongly about, your nanny needs to know just how strongly you feel up front, and you need to present these issues to her in the interview as definite Deal-Breakers - no excuses. — Tammy Gold

-Question: "On a scale from one to ten how fierce are you?"- David: "You are just asking me this because I am gay ... What the fuck does that mean?" -David Levithan, at Teen Lit Con- — David Levithan

I'm the lady by day, and I'm Gaga by night. And I'm always going to be that way, because it's a testament to your discipline as a musician. I do like to drink, I like to get crazy, I like to go out with my friends, and I like to sing rock and roll. I used to go-go dance! And I like to be inspired by young artists, people like Millie who are outrageously hard, disciplined individuals. But at the end of the day I'm a classically trained pianist and I'm a singer, and that's what allows the girl that goes out at night to also go on stage with Tony Bennett at Lincoln Center. Because I know how to do it. — Lady Gaga

I missed you," she said softly, her breath against his cheek making his body harden everywhere.
"You too."
"It's terrible to be this infatuated."
"I agree."
"I haven't felt this alive in years."
"Me either."
"Screw the interview," she said breathlessly. "Let's make out."
He saw stars. Literally. Stars. How was this possibly his life? Beautiful women did not show up on the doorsteps of disabled vets and proposition them.
"Are you an alien?" he asked.
"Not that I know of."
"Are we on Candid Camera?"
She took a quick look around the room. "You never know, but my guess is no."
"Is someone paying you a vast sum of money to make me feel like this?"
She bit her lower lip, as if deep in thought. "Not that I recall, but if a million dollars suddenly hits my account, I'll give you half."
"You must be for real. Fine. You win. Let's go make out. — Katy Regnery

The interview process tests not what the applicant knows, but how well they can process tricky questions: If you wanted to figure out how many times on average you would have to flip the pages of the Manhattan phone book to find a specific name, how would you approach the problem? If a spider fell to the bottom of a 50-foot well, and each day climbed up 3 feet and slipped back 2, how many days would it take the spider to get out of the well? . — Bill Gates

None of the questions was what I expected. Most of them were esoteric thought experiments, 'How would you turn Pride and Prejudice into a video game?' and 'If you added a button to Pac-Man, what would you want it to do?' Conundrums like 'How come when Mario jumps he can change direction in midair? — Austin Grossman

If there's one thing worse than not HAVING a job ... It's LOOKING for one! — Laurence Stuart

I don't know why people feel that I am snooty. I am not a person who has ever given an interview on image building. I have never been that person, as I am very confident of what I do. People do PR, but I get completely foxed. I don't know how to do it. I stay away from the limelight, as I think my work should speak on my behalf. — Kareena Kapoor Khan

Okay, this is Fran Lebowitz. She gave an interview once for the Paris Review about trying to write fiction and saying that fiction writers start talking about how characters are talking to them, and it's crazy, she's never had that. And I also thought, I'm never gonna be able to do this, because I didn't feel that for a really long time. — Sloane Crosley

'What is your desired salary?' The unwritten rule when it comes to salary is this: whoever proposes a number first loses. When you interview, you should never feel pressured to answer this question. Simply let your interviewer know that the most important thing to you is how well you fit the position. — Travis Bradberry

The thing is, I love a celebrity interview. Doesn't matter how big or how small. It could be Hillary Clinton or the guy who made it to the third round of 'Popstars,' I'll read it. — Sharon Horgan

I started getting Twitter followers after I started doing press for 'Fargo.' One of my best friends from college is a librarian, and she started tracking after each interview how many Twitter followers I got. She and her librarian friends were like, 'We're going to make a graph.' And I was like, 'Alright, nerds.' — Allison Tolman

If you ask me to describe my relationship, I mean - words are too clumsy to accurately describe how I feel in that regard, particularly in an interview. It's a strange thing. — Ryan Reynolds

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We actually wanted to ask you a few questions. About the interview you did this morning."
At the mention of her KTVU debut, Caitlyn softened a little. "You saw that?"
I nodded.
"How did I look on camera?"
Her grief was touching. — Gemma Halliday

I don't want to be in my 'interview zone' mode. I've been doing a lot of interviews and I'm very self-aware of how I'm coming across. — Erika M. Anderson

Q: Where and when do you do your writing?
A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules ... afternoons are best, but I'm too lethargic for any real regime. When I'm in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don't know where I'm going with an idea, I'm lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the "creative moment." I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What's the American phrase? If it ain't broke ... — Zadie Smith

Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[ ... ] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything ... and know that we don't, that's the important part. — Noam Chomsky

Of course no documentary is completely 'objective.' Every decision you make - who to interview, how to edit, where to hold the camera - imposes a point of view on the film. — Marshall Curry

In an interview in 1992, Leary stated, "It is a genetic imperative to explore the brain. Because it's there. If you're carrying around in your head 100 billion mainframe computers, you just have to get in there and learn how to operate them. — Maxwell Maltz

In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off. — Lawrence Durrell

Well, there's good fiction. There are wonderful books, and yes, it's good to read them. Maybe if you've read a lot of fiction, you reach this stage of satiation, and you start thinking well, what's the point, but then you talk to people who've read barely any, and you realize that things you take for granted if you've read a lot of fiction - unreliable narrators, how language frames your perception of people - things that seem obvious to the point of banality, except they're not to people who aren't in the habit of reading fiction. — Helen DeWitt

Actually, the only time I ever tried to cultivate being sexy was when I read Peyton Place. I was about sixteen and I read that this guy's watching this woman walk and he can tell she's a good fuck by the way she walks. It's a whole passage. He's telling Allison McKenzie, "I know you're a virgin." And she says, "Well, how?" And he says, "I can tell by the way you walk." And I thought, Uh-oh, everybody knows! I was ashamed to be a virgin, so I tried to cultivate a fucked walk. I tried to figure out what it looked like. I figured I'd watch any hot woman I could. I mean, look at Jeanne Moreau. You watch her walk across the street on the screen and you know she's had at least a hundred men. (Penthouse interview, 1976) — Patti Smith

I'm always surprised by how many people give up before they enter the room. They buy into the hype - that there are so many more qualified applicants, that no one's hiring - and assume they're not going to get the job. You've got to go into every interview believing this is the one you're going to nail. — Nicole Williams

I want to be a Kid Reporter because I would like to meet interesting people, and I also love being in front of the camera! As a Kid Reporter, I would love to learn how to be a better writer and interview people. — Charlotte Arnold

Africa was a place of yearning to me even. As a child, whenever I watched the logs swim down the Ljusnan towards the ocean, I imagined they were crocodiles. This is the luxury of childhood - children trust their fantasy unconditionally. In school, reality becomes more important. If, later in your life, you decide to become an artist, you have to regain this lost skill. At least that is how it was for me. A few years ago I was in Sveg again - and you know what?
I could still see the crocodiles. — Henning Mankell

You're acting like a child! was one brave reporter's response when I denied his interview.
Was I acting like child?
No, I didn't think I was. They didn't understand any of this if they thought that.
You know, sometimes I wanted to take their hands and place the truth in it. I wanted to give them everything I had. Sometimes I wanted to act like they treated me and show them how childish I could be. I wanted to give them the weight of everything I felt and let them be the goddamn judge of this shit.
Sometimes I wanted to vent, scream, and give it all away. Here, you take my talent. Take my life you feel the need to criticize every moment of the day. Take everything I have and you deal with the shit. You see what you can make of it since you seem to think I'm doing so badly.
I wanted them to feel the pressure, the inadequateness, the letdown, all of it. — Shey Stahl

Most hiring managers interview a lot of people. So many that they generally have to go back to their notes to remember candidates - the exception being candidates with a strong hook. Sometimes these hooks are how people dress or their personality, but the best hook is a strong story that's work-related. — Travis Bradberry

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that. — Tom Araya

Sure I love Goldie. How could you not love Goldie? Everyone loves Goldie. I love her, and I hope our love will continue, but I don't want to give an I-love-Goldie-Hawn interview. — Kurt Russell

Or, you know, you could interview the perfectly willing Epic walking beside you."
I coughed into my hand. "Well, um, this scheme may have started because I was thinking about how to rescue you from your powers. I figured if I knew how long it took, and what was required to hold an Epic ... You know. It might help you."
"Aw," she said. "That has to be the sweetest way someone has ever told me they were planning to kidnap and imprison me. — Brandon Sanderson

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories. — Elmore Leonard

There's no school that you can go to and learn how to be a "Daily Show" correspondent and how to interview people and, you know, essentially leave your soul outside the door and go in there and kind of, you know, destroy people's lives sometimes. — Aasif Mandvi

She disliked him more for having mastered her inner will. How dared he say that he would love her still, even though she shook him off with contempt? She wished she had spoken more - stronger. Sharp, decisive speeches came thronging to her mind, now that it was too late to utter them. The deep impression made by the interview was like that of a horror in a dream; that will not leave the room although we waken up, and rub our eyes, and force a stiff rigid smile upon our lips. It is there - there, cowering and gibbering, with fixed ghastly eyes, in some corner of the chamber, listening to hear whether we dare to breathe of its presence to anyone. And we dare not; poor cowards that we are! — Elizabeth Gaskell

In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said that the Secret Service taught Malia how to drive. In exchange, Malia taught the Secret Service how to throw a party when her parents are away. — Conan O'Brien

[Speculating thoughts after an interview with A. A. Milne] The main point was that Mr. Milne took his writing very seriously, "even though I was taking it into the nursery," as he put it. There was no question of tossing off something that was good enough for the kiddies. He was writing first to please and satisfy himself. After that he wanted to please his wife. He depended utterly upon doing this. Without her encouragement, her delight and her laughter he couldn't have gone on. With it who cared what the critics wrote or how few copies Methuens sold? Then he hoped to please his boy. This came third, not first, as so many people supposed. — Christopher Milne

I'm constantly playing this game in my head where I'm thinking, 'Can this quote be pared down and misinterpreted?' It doesn't matter what outlet I'm talking to and how comprehensive the interview is, because I have to think in terms of, 'Right, but 'People' magazine could just take this one quote and take it out of context.' — Anna Kendrick

All of our language reflects this. If you're empty, you need to fulfill yourself. If you're stressed, learn how to take care of yourself. If you're on a job interview, you have to believe in yourself. If you're at the tattoo parlor, you must learn to express yourself. If someone dares to criticize you, you have to love yourself. If you're not getting your own way, you have to stand up for yourself. What should you do on a date? You ought to be yourself. What if your self is a train wreck? What do you do then? — John Ortberg

When I was a kid in San Diego, I would read fashion magazines and Interview magazine, and all of that really inspired me to create a persona. So by the time I moved to New York, in the early '80s, I'd learned how to create a persona, and I knew what my persona would be. — RuPaul

Any kind of art that seems to be just about normal people, it's judged less by how good of a work of art it is, and more by how much the critic thinks that that is true to life. Which, you know, I think might be why something like Boyhood was so hugely praised, whereas something like Margaret was a little unfairly marginalized. There were people who said, "OK, well, I don't relate to these characters," or, "I think the way they speak is off from real-life" as opposed to saying, "Is what's being expressed in it - is the emotional content true to life?" You can just look on Youtube and see clips into people's real life very easily, so I'm actually more excited by that feeling of, I'm being immersed completely in this one guy's view of the world. But, obviously, I get more excited talking about other people's work than my own. — Adrian Tomine

When I interview somebody, I look at their resume to see what they've done, who they've worked with, and how many times. If they've gotten repeat work. Those are the kinds of actors I want to hire. — Joe Pantoliano

How many are we talking about? What percentage of females in Chicago are ready to have sex with you right now? What happens if one of them needs to travel? Do they have a phone tree? Is there a coverage plan or a backup plan for emergencies?"
Quinn covered the bottom half of his mouth with his free hand, too late to mask the smile, his shoulders started shaking with silent laughter.
I continued, feeling a little better knowing that he was able to laugh at himself, "Is there entry criteria? An established search committee? An interview process? Skills test? What kind of radius do you require? Do you have one circling the block now? Do you always keep one nearby? Was there one at the restaurant? At the bar maybe? — Penny Reid

I would love to interview Roberto Benigni just so I could tell him how much his movie, life is beautiful, meant to me. — Giuliana Rancic

We are professionals. We are going to finish that way. In reality, how we conduct ourselves in this period and how well our players play will be as good an interview as you can do - better than anything you could say. — Mike Hankwitz

I have this fantasy that the second movie would begin with a brief statement by all of the young actors who had played the children in the first movie, explaining how it had ruined their lives, so we would catch up with Emily Browning drinking heavily in the back of a burlesque bar, and maybe Liam Aiken would be living underneath a bridge, and then instead of the twins who played Sunny, we would just try to find the oldest woman in the world, and get an interview with her sitting in a trailer park. — Daniel Handler

I happened to see Larry King interview Billy Graham shortly after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. I had read an article the previous month about violent video games and their effects on the minds of children, desensitizing them to the act of killing. Larry King asked Billy Graham what was wrong with the world, and how such a thing as Columbine could happen. I knew, because Billy Graham was an educated man, he had read the same article I had read, and I began calculating his answer for him, that violence begets violence, and that we live in a culture desensitized to the beauty of human life and the sanctity of creation. But Billy Graham did not blame video games. Billy Graham looked Larry King in the eye and said, 'Thousands of years ago, a young couple lived in a garden called Eden, and God placed a tree in the Garden and told them not to eat from the tree ... '
And I knew in my soul he was right. — Donald Miller

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world. — Chuck Palahniuk

He has an interview going on, so if anyone asks you anything about anything, smile and lie."
"So, if they ask how it feels to spend our evenings filing briefings from three years ago, we should say it's great? Atticusa asked sarcastically, as he pulled out the files he needed to work on next. — J.J. McAvoy

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?
This is a trick question. It doesn't matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer's interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there's a difference, at one in the morning while you're hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy. — Stuart Connelly

It is crazy even to ask what creativity is. It would be just as useful to interview a caraway plant in your garden and ask: "How did you decided to be a spice?" — Eeva Kilpi

I'm a member of the American Chemical Society, and in its magazine, the 'Chemical and Engineering News,' there was an interview of Vince Gilligan when he had first started the television show 'Breaking Bad.' And in that interview, he was stating how important it was to him that he get the science right for the show. — Donna Nelson

In the interview, Roger reflected how the German philosopher Nietzsche said a man can undergo torture if he knows the why of his life. But I, here at Dachau, learned something far greater. I learned to know the Who of my life. He was enough to sustain me then, and is enough to sustain me still — Ken Dignan

To Do Start with a conversation - a "stay interview." Learn about your talented employees' goals and what they love (or don't love) about their work. Don't stop with one chat. Talk (and listen!) daily, weekly, monthly. Develop a true relationship with every single person you hope to keep on your team. Hold "Alas Clinics" - opportunities to talk with others about talented people who have left your team lately. Why did they go? What role (if any) did you play in their leaving? How can you prevent more unwanted turnover? Think about who might be "loose in the saddle" (about ready to leave you); talk with them soon, and collaborate with them to get more of what they want and need from you, from the team, from their jobs. Go big picture. Ask yourself, "What kind of work environment do I want to create?" Then figure out what you need to do in order to make that vision come alive. Then - go do it! — Beverly Kaye

I wrote every day throughout my twenties. For a while, I had a boyfriend who was a musician, and he practiced every day. He played scales; I wrote small fictional scenes. It was the same idea - to keep your hand in your craft, to stay close to it. On bad days, when I felt no inspiration at all, I would set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and make myself sit there and scribble something, anything. I had read an interview with John Updike where he said that some of the best novels you've ever read were written in an hour a day; I figured I could always carve out at least thirty minutes somewhere to dedicate myself to my work, no matter what else was going on or how badly I believed the work was going. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In a new interview, the president discussed the upcoming election. He said that Hillary Clinton is going to do great as a presidential candidate. When asked how Biden would do, Obama said, 'Hillary's going to do great.' — Jimmy Fallon

Ismat Chugti has been my inspiration, for her patriarchy submerged, womencentric stories. I see and think of women as they would want to be and not how we have been formularized in imaginations." (interview in Beyond Sindh, a HongKong based Sindhi magazine). — Kusum Choppra

It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God. — Roger Ebert

An interview:
Interviewer: How do you sleep with long hair?
Paul McCartney: How do you sleep with short hair?
George Harrison: How do you sleep with your arms and legs still attached?
Paul: It's just as much bother. Less, even.
John Lennon: Short hair has to be trimmed.
Ringo Starr: Yeah.
John: That's why we have parties!
Paul: Yeah, that must be it! We can't sleep with all this long hair! — The Beatles

I do interview senior candidates at the home office or many of our hotel or restaurant General Manager candidates. My two favorite questions are "Tell me about a failure in your career, what you learned from it, and how you've leveraged this lesson" and "All of us are misperceived at one time or another. What's the most common way you're misperceived in the workplace and why?" Both of these questions require a certain amount of self-awareness and a willingness to not give pat, normal answers that we offer experience in interviews. — Chip Conley

And the second [thing about the CBS EVENING NEWS that stands out in the mind of Michael J. Fox] was something Katie did later in the interview, as the drugs kicked in and the tremors segued into the jerkiness of dyskinesias. Somewhere in the contortions of making a point, my left arm detached the microphone clip from my jacket lapel. With no fuss and hardly a break in conversation or eye contact, she calmly leaned over and refastened it. Neither of us commented on it, but it was such an empathetic gesture, so far from anything patronizing or pitying, a simple kindness that allowed me the dignity to carry on making a point more important than the superficiality of my physical circumstance ...
... One thing was abundantly clear though, whether or not she was able to forget how much she liked me: with that single act of consideration, she made it abundantly clear how much she loved her father. — Michael J. Fox

I was watching an interview with Martin Scorcese concerning Raging Bull, which is one of my favorite films, and he was talking about how he'd worked with a lot of guys who weren't quote-unquote "actors," like Joe Pesce and Frank Vincent. Scorcese was very smart in the way that he cast, because you don't know where you're going to find the right person who can carry a role and summon that emotion you're looking for. — Lenny Kravitz

We're often afraid to do anything unless we know we can do it extremely well. But we get to Carnegie Hall by practicing. I remember how freeing it was several years ago to read in an interview with Joan Baez that some of Bob Dylan's early songs weren't so wonderful. We have this image of genius springing fully grown out of Zeus' forehead. — Marianne Williamson

Sometimes I worry, for myself, that I've stopped being amazed at certain things, or I've taken for granted a set of ideas about how the world works, what people are doing with each other or alone, all the fundamental relationships in the world. I worry that I start taking it for granted and stop feeling the intensity of it because of language. Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world. — Ben Marcus

The music world taught me a lot.It taught me how much happiness it could take from you. J. Cole said it in that interview: People forget their happiness and what makes them happy. Like, what you really wanted to do it for. — Fetty Wap

Bullock, Sam, died at the age of one-twelve. They'd been married five years. She was forty-six."
"Isn't that romantic?"
"Heart-tugging. First husband was younger, a callow seventy-three to her twenty-two."
"Wealthy?"
"Was - not Sam Bullock wealthy, but well-stocked. Got eaten by a shark."
"Step off."
"Seriously. Scuba diving out in the Great Barrier Reef. He was eighty-eight. And this shark cruises along and chomp, chomp."
She gave Eve a thoughtful look. "Ending as shark snacks is in my top-ten list of ways I don't want to go out. How about you?"
"It may rank as number one, now that I've considered it a possibility. Any hint of foul play?"
"They weren't able to interview the shark, but it was put down as death by misadventure. — J.D. Robb

Follow up the interview with a phone call. If Carrot Top can figure out how to use a phone, so can you. — Tom Cole

How good a predictor of job productivity is a cognitive test score compared to a job interview? Reference checks? College transcript? The answer, probably surprising to many, is that the test score is a better predictor of job performance than any other single measure. This is the conclusion to be drawn from a meta-analysis on the different predictors of job performance, as shown in the table below. — Richard J. Herrnstein

The reason why the book begins with the wish to "play back" how the two met is precisely to see if repeating the scenario might tell the narrator why he is so thoroughly smitten, to play with the scenario all over again, perhaps to master it, as Freud says about repetition. But there cannot be a "reason." An attraction that needs a reason is not a reason the heart or the body cares much about. — Andre Aciman

Internet marketing entrepreneurs have truly opened my eyes to just how important a quick turnaround time can be. Often times, an interview they conduct with me today is online by the next morning. The interviewee is then able to start making money less than 24 hours after the initial interview. — Marc Ostrofsky

I wanted when we began this to have a conversation, the kind that you're able to have, and the only way I knew how to do it was not to have a pre-interview. — James Lipton

One of my first questions when I interview prospective employees is, 'Do you know how big a sheet of plywood is?' Most people don't, and say they are different sizes, but it's 4' x 8'. Anyway, working with your hands is a very American thing that we kinda lost here, but it's an important skill to have. — Casey Neistat

I know chances are if I don't give an interview or make a public appearance or statement from time to time, they'll invent one. Every so often, I suppose people ask, 'Whatever happened to that other Beatle, George Harrison?' And someone comes around with a ready answer, no matter how preposterous it seems. It's possibly the worst price one has to pay for what they call stardom. — George Harrison

The essential criterion for running a bookstore is less "Do you like books?" than "Do you like people?" Ironically, we find that having unlimited access to more reading material than we ever could have imagined means we read less. Chuck and Dee Robinson own Village Books [...]He once said in an interview with business writer Rober Spector, "If you're opening a bookstore because you love reading books, then become a night watchman because you'll be able to read more books that way." He was right. It's amazing how just the sight of so much intellectual fodder quells the appetite, let alone how little time remains to read once the shelves have been straightened, the day's swap credits assessed and put away, and the sales taxes tallied. — Wendy Welch

However, in a later interview, housed in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, London, Beesly was less judicious. "As an Englishman and a lover of the Royal Navy," he said, "I would prefer to attribute this failure to negligence, even gross negligence, rather [than] to a conspiracy deliberately to endanger the ship." But, he said, "on the basis of the considerable volume of information which is now available, I am reluctantly compelled to state that on balance, the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war." So much was done for the Orion and other warships, he wrote, but nothing for the Lusitania. He struggled with this. No matter how he arranged the evidence, he came back to conspiracy. He said, "If that's unacceptable, will someone tell me another explanation to these very very curious circumstances? — Erik Larson

This morning I watched a Diane Sawyer interview where there wasn't one awkward pause. The trick is to pose good questions. "So how was being in the war?" I ask. I'm always saying the wrong thing. — Kathleen Hale

There was an advertisement in the newspaper for a teaching position in a school with the worst reputation in town, with the sort of class that no qualified teacher with all the parts of her brain correctly screwed together would voluntarily face. It was attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder before attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder had been invented. "There's no hope for these boys and girls," the headmaster soberly explained in the interview. "This is not education, this is storage." Maybe Sonja understood how it felt to be described as such. The vacant position attracted only one applicant, and she got those boys and girls to read Shakespeare. — Fredrik Backman

She says Ariel is going to interview me after she's done and he's going to ask me how many golf balls can fit into a stretch limo, and the right answer is to make reasonable estimates on the spot, maybe say, "It's probably like 100 golf balls high by 60 golf balls wide by 1,000 golf balls long," and to look like I'm thinking really hard, and then just do the math in my head and give him the answer. I ask, "Out of curiosity, what would a wrong answer be?" She says, "Freaking out about the question. — David Shapiro

We made our debut in Japan about few years ago and when we went on a morning show there to promote our album, I did a brief interview in Japanese using simple expressions such as "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu." But one of the members of our group said, "Stay quiet if you can't speak Japanese! It's embarrassing!" So that's when I told myself that I'd show how good I am by studying Japanese hard. — Seungri

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

Every interview I do, it's basically 'how did he do it,' and I owe it all to my representation, and my manager is basically like my mother, she's so picky. — Jamie Bell

After several days, I had a pivotal interview with my teacher. When I described how I'd become so overwhelmed, she calmly asked, "How are you relating to the presence of desire?" I was startled into understanding. Her question pointed me back to the essence of mindfulness practice: It doesn't matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience. For me, desire had become the enemy, and I was losing the battle. She advised me to stop fighting my experience and instead investigate the nature of my wanting mind. Desire was just another passing phenomenon, she reminded me. It was attachment or aversion to it that was the problem. — Tara Brach

The business world and adult society only really made sense to me if they were supposed to be funny, but I didn't see many other people laughing, so I started inventing my own worlds where life seemed more how it should be. — Christian Cook

But somehow, every time there's a natural disaster, news crews manage to track down one of these outdoorsy yahoos to interview about how the "twister came a-screamin' down the holler" and destroyed the snake farm his family had been running for generations. — Molly Harper

If there's one thing I sincerely hope this book might get you to reconsider," Rudder writes in the introduction, "it's what you think about yourself. Because that's what this book is really about. OKCupid is just how I arrived at the story." Rudder wants to convince us that data is how we can arrive at our own stories. "As the Internet has democratized journalism, photography, pornography, charity, comedy, and so many other courses of personal endeavor, it will, I hope, eventually democratize our fundamental narrative." Gone are the days when our moment is defined only by researchers, effete columnists or whoever else gets to say what a millennial is. Now, Rudder argues, the story is ours to tell. — Christian Rudder

I'm a California boy. I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
(Paris Review Interview) — Ray Bradbury

I remember listening to an interview with Beyonce and she talked about how she and her husband, Jay-Z, have always made it a point to have the conversation about them be about their music, not about their business, not about their personal business. — Jennifer Lopez

I was not prepared to hear over and over from men how the women - the mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives - in their lives are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate, all the while they are standing in front of that cramped wizard closet where their men are huddled inside, adjusting the curtain and making sure no one sees in and no one gets out. There was a moment when I was driving home from an interview with a small group of men and thought, Holy shit. I am the patriarchy. — Brene Brown