Interviewer Quotes

A good interview is one that makes you feel interviewer was good who gifted the thoughts for years to come, those still lingering with several questions that need to be answered and scenarios that weren't touched upon. And yet you receive an offer. ~ Santosh Avvannavar

How to Perform Paced Breathing

Paced breathing is a slow, regular rate of deep breathing. There are three main points to keep in mind when practicing:

1.Breathe slowly. Concentrate on slowing the rate of your breathing to eight or ten breaths per minute.

2.Inhale and exhale through your nose. It is more difficult to take shallow breaths from the upper chest when you breathe through your nose. This keeps you from hyperventilating.

3.Choose a neutral word to focus on while practicing paced breathing. The words "one," "calm," and "relax" work well. Each time you exhale, say the word in your mind. This will assist in keeping your breathing evenly paced, and will help to reduce the chances of interfering thoughts.

During the day, when you are not practicing paced breathing, alternate paced and normal breathing. Every single breath you take does not have to come from the diaphragm. There should be a natural rhythm between chest breathing and diaphragm breathing. Find a comfortable balance but do more diaphragmatic breathing than you usually do.

Tony is at a local law office to interview for an internship. He wants to become a trial lawyer. He is very excited by the thought of working professionally, but is so anxious about the interview that he feels lightheaded and numb. He is afraid he won't be able to say what he wants to, and that his answers will be incorrect.
As he waits for the interviewer, Tony starts to ~ Heather Moehn

There's an analogy I came up with once for an interviewer who asked me how much of my material was autobiographical," Octavia says. "I said that the life experience of a fiction writer is like butter in cookie dough: it's a crucial part of flavor and texture - you certainly couldn't leave it out - but if you've done it right, it can't be discerned as a separate element. There shouldn't be a place that anyone can point to and say, There--she's talking about her miscarriage, or Look--he wrote that because his wife had an affair ~ Carolyn Parkhurst

You know, people always look at that headline as me being "outed," but you can ask anyone, I couldn't even find a closet with a map! ~ Ashlyn Kane

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. ~ Gina Greenlee

The second day of the book tour I stopped an interviewer and said, "Aren't you asking the wrong question?" The interviewer stared at me blankly.

"The question is not really why I chose to share my experiences with other people. The question we should be dealing with is why does anyone mistreat their children? I think that's what we should be talking about. ~ Christina Crawford

Britney Spears told an interviewer if she weren't famous, she would be a teacher. So thank God she's famous. ~ Jay Leno

One interviewer asked me: 'How do you feel that you've betrayed your father?' That wasn't really very cool. ~ Dhani Harrison

What's the worst, is when people clearly haven't researched you. One time an interviewer asked me if I do a lot of plays. I'm like, yeah. Have you Googled me? There's this thing called Google, and you can ask Google that question. Then you could come to me with informed questions that didn't make me feel like I am brand new to the world. ~ Laura Benanti

INTERVIEWER:
What specific piece of advice would you give to young writers?

MALAMUD:
Write your heart out. ~ Bernard Malamud

I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months. ~ Bono

Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it. ~ Brian Greene

It is perhaps an ugly comment on the American press, but the function of the interviewer on most newspapers is to entertain, not to shed light. . . . An interviewer soon begins to judge public figures on the basis of their entertainment value, overlooking their true importance. It is not easy to get an interview with Professor Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist in the world, across a city desk, but a mild interview with Oom the Omnipotent will hit the bottom of page one under a two-column head. . . . It is safe to write accurately only about the nuts and bums. When a public figure does something ridiculous reporters may then write about him accurately. ~ Joseph Mitchell

Interviewer: You said I'm the first psychoanalyst you've met who had a sense of humor. Meaning you've met others who didn't?

Ezra: Proper little Sherlock over here, huh. ~ Amie Kaufman

insinuating that any current majority white leadership in any industry has got there through hard work and no outside help, as if whiteness isn't its own leg up, as if it doesn't imply a familiarity that warms an interviewer to a candidate... [is] wilful ignorance". ~ Reni Eddo-Lodge

Where do you get your stories?" the interviewer asked. It was a typical question.
Ben had answered it himself once. He believed that writers gathered sensory data from dreams and experiences, and then in the imagination all that information stirred up like celestial dust into giant pillars of creation, where all that data bonded together into characters, settings, an entire universe.
Fleischer, however, believed that stories came from a much different place. He believed that all good wrtiers were simply tools for a greater force.
"Call it the Muse, call it Gan, call it God, or whatever you want. I personally don't have a name for it. But you know you're in it's grip when the story just flows through you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. At that point... you're just a pen. ~ David Jacob Knight

Find out if your radio interviewer has read your book, or you are going to have to do that part of the job on air. It's okay if they haven't, but it's always better to be prepared for what's coming. ~ M.J. Rose

Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved?
el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her. ~ Nawal El Saadawi

I'm not a journalist; I'm probably a horrible interviewer. The one small thing I have is I'm curious, and I'm interested in who I'm with. ~ Doug Aitken

Ezra: And then I said it.
Interviewer; What did he say?
Kady Grant: He said, 'You picked a hell of a day to dump me, Kades. ~ Amie Kaufman

Interviews can be stimulating. It depends on the intelligence of the interviewer. ~ Muriel Spark

I've done a lot of interviews of the last few years, and I've actually started a list of questions that it would be fun to ask an author, but no respectable interviewer would ever ask. Since I'm not respectable, I'm going to start doing interviews with some authors I know, just for fun. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

INTERVIEWER
Have you ever been envious of another writer?
WODEHOUSE
No, never. I'm really such a voracious reader that I'm only too grateful to get some stuff I can read. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

An interviewer once asked Mother Teresa what she says to God when she prays. "I don't say anything," she replied. "I just listen." Then the interviewer asked her what God says to her. "He doesn't say anything," said Mother Teresa. "He just listens. And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you. ~ Joseph Goldstein

An interview is only as good as both parties are willing to give to the interview and that includes the interviewer. ~ Jay Duplass

I have noticed that most people don't use more than a pea size equivalent of their brain. They can't process more than one idea each time. If I say that my grandparents were from Switzerland and then I was born somewhere else, they will forget the somewhere else and focus on Switzerland; If I say that my name originates in the South of France before saying my nationality, it becomes irrelevant as well. And I'm surprised at how many people get offended when I tell them I can easily brainwash them with new ideas and convince them that I'm right. It's not my fault but theirs, for not knowing how to think. They shouldn't blame the overthinker but the underthinker. And yet, I hear so many times this explanation for any kind of life problem: "You think too much". Everything serves as an excuse to be stupid in this world. And then the majority wonders why getting a job is so difficult for them. It's not for overthinkers. I used to be called for job interviews because I was a rule breaker; I would hide my age and be called because the interviewer wanted to ask me how old I am; or paint the letters of my CV in green and be called because it was the first to be noticed among thousands in black and white. The only problem about overthinking is that you will eventually overcome the norm. That's why I don't need a job anymore; I have outthought the majority. ~ Robin Sacredfire

BLOOM: I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.
INTERVIEWER: It's always interminable?
BLOOM: I do not know anyone who has ever benefited from Freudian or any other mode of analysis, except by being, to use the popular trope for it, so badly shrunk, that they become quite dried out. That is to say, all passion spent. Perhaps they become better people, but they also become stale and uninteresting people with very few exceptions. Like dried-out cheese, or wilted flowers. ~ Harold Bloom

BLOOM: As far as I'm concerned, computers have as much to do with literature as space travel, perhaps much less. I can only write with a ballpoint pen, with a Rolling Writer, they're called, a black Rolling Writer on a lined yellow legal pad on a certain kind of clipboard. And then someone else types it.
INTERVIEWER: And someone else edits?
BLOOM: No one edits. I edit. I refuse to be edited. ~ Harold Bloom

A good interviewer is able to ferret out what the applicant is really passionate about. Ask them what they do for fun, what they're reading, try and find out if they have a life outside of work. ~ Nolan Bushnell

I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can. ~ Ira Glass

INTERVIEWER: Why are you working as a home security guard? Aren't there things you'd like to do?

H.S. GUARD: There's not really anything I'd like to do. I'm more hoping for the world to end quickly. ~ Anonymous

I don't really know [who my favorite vampire is]. I always think, 'Ethan Hawke in Interview with a Vampire,' and someone will say, 'He's not the vampire. He's the interviewer.' ~ Robert Pattinson

I always get that cautionary warning right before I get off the phone with an interviewer. It's: 'Good luck with the show. I really like it, and if this goes wrong, you'll be hearing from my attorneys. ~ Jon Stewart

Interviewer: What do you want your tombstone to say? Reply: I was hoping for a pyramid. ~ Eldon Farrell

Interviewer: Have you ever considered writing nonfiction? Mary Doria Russell: Oh, honey, I did! Let's see ... There was "A Reconsideration of the Evidence for Cannibalism at the Krapina Neandertal Site." That was a big hit. And who could ever forget "Cutmarks on the Engis II Calvarium"? Then there was "Browridge Development as a Function of Bending Stress in the Supraorbital Region." I got tons of reprint requests for that one. Trust me fiction is better. ~ Mary Doria Russell

[Demystifying lesbian sex for an interviewer] In a way, the sex isn't really that different ... From what I can tell, no, not really. All the things that men and women do together, think of everything that men and women do together, women and women can do together. And that makes you realize that sex is just simply about connecting with another person, or about intimacy ... ~ Jennifer Beals

Never agree to a job interview in which the interviewer has seen you naked. ~ Susan Mallery

So Mr.Bass why do you think you should become an Usher? asked the interviewer.Chuck smiled.
Because I'm Chuck Bass. ~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

Basically, I'm a really bad interviewer. I love meeting celebrities, but then I get a bit bored. Once you meet them you thing, 'really, what an ordinary person'. ~ Graham Norton

The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced. It's one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala [an alleged incident that Mrs. Obama had just recounted to the interviewer]. It's another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress. ~ Barack Obama

It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed. ~ William Hague

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations. ~ Werner Herzog

I was a standup comic, which doesn't necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn't talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I'll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was. ~ Scott Aukerman

Oprah has this intense curiosity that I haven't found with any interviewer. ~ Genevieve Gorder

Here, of course, lies the biggest difference between a successful interviewer and an unsuccessful one: the successful one makes the interviewee feel as though he or she is interested in the answers. The unsuccessful interviewer - and I have sat in or listened to enough interviews to know, unfortunately, and disappointingly, how common they are - does not. ~ Chuck Klosterman

I was watching Booknotes on CSPAN the other day and got caught up in an interview with a literary critic from the New York Times.The interviewer asked the critic why he thought the Harry Potter series was selling so many copies. "Wish fulfillment," the critic answered. He said the lead character in the book could wave a wand and make things happen, and this is one of the primary fantasies of the human heart. I think this is true. I call it "Clawing for Eden."But the Bible says Eden is gone, and as much as we want to believe we can fix our lives in about as many steps as it takes to make a peanut-butter sandwich, I don't believe we can. ~ Donald Miller

I think you've got be willing as an interviewer to ask the dumb question every now and then. ~ Steve Kroft

Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u's version of 'How Soon Is Now'?
Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.
Interviewer: They're the teenage Russian lesbians.
Morrissey: Well, aren't we all? ~ Morrissey

Interviewer: "What keeps you grounded?" Bieber: "Gravity." Interviewer: "What's up, Justin?" Bieber: "The sky, man." ~ Justin Bieber

It's kind of a shame that it's even an issue. Not being gay, I can't fully appreciate how complicated that is. In the article, the interviewer asked me, and I said that if I were, I would just say it. ~ Scott Wolf

Mr. Harappa,' the Angrez television interviewer is asking, 'many commentators would say, there is a widely-held view, some sectors of opinion maintain, your opponents allege, what would you say to the suggestion, that by some standards, from certain points of view, in a way, your style of government might be described as being perhaps, to some extent ... ( ... ) ~ Salman Rushdie

Interviewer: What does it mean to you to be a Silettian detective?
Murray: (Pause.) It means I was blind, and now I can see.
Interviewer: And the drinking?
Murray: Well. Some people need glasses to see, you know. ~ Sara Gran

Earlier in life, I put family in front of faith. I've fixed that. But I always tried to keep work fourth on the list. I was proud when [my wife] Nellie told an interviewer, 'I never could tell whether John had a good practice or a bad practice, because he never brought it home' ~ John Wooden

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," Grant is said to have replied, "So would I. ~ Cary Grant

Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.

-on his friend E.B. White ~ James Thurber

Are you afraid?" an interviewer asked him after the bombing, and there was a pause, and then Martin Luther King said, very firmly, "No, I'm not. My attitude is that this is a great cause, a great issue that we're confronted with, and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important. It is the triumph of a cause that I am concerned about, and I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted, and be willing to face the consequences, whatever they are, and if he is filled with fear, he cannot do it. ~ Robert A. Caro

However, after 1930 Liddell never competed again in public in a major athletic meeting. Did he ever regret missing the 1928 Olympics and the chance of winning at least another gold medal? Did he lament trading fame and glory for a life of obscurity and hardship? He gave clear and unequivocal answers to these questions when interviewed in Canada at the end of his first furlough in 1932. 'Are you glad you gave your life to missionary work? Don't you miss the limelight, the rush, the frenzy, the cheers, the rich red wine of victory?' probed the interviewer in rather florid prose. 'Oh well, of course it's natural for a chap to think over all that sometimes,' replied Liddell. 'But I'm glad I'm at the work I'm engaged in now. A fellow's life counts for far more for this than the other. Not a corruptible crown, but an incorruptible one, you know. ~ Julian Wilson

I made a point of answering the question I received with some frequency from journalists, Do you think books can change people's lives? (which really meant, Do you actually think anything you could write could mean anything to anyone?), with a little airtight thought experiment in which I asked the interviewer to imagine the sort of person he might be if all of the literature he'd read in his life were somehow excised from his mind, his mind and soul, and as the journalist contemplated this nuclear winter I sat back with a self-satisfied smile, saved again from facing the truth. ~ Nicole Krauss

Interviewer: "Do you think you'll ever surf again?"
Bethany Hamilton: "Think? I Know ... ~ Marianne Morea

Most often, qualifications are defined by the credentials of the person who last held the job. If that is to continue to be the litmus test, white males will continue to be the top choice on any list, if the interviewer is also a white male. ~ Madeleine M. Kunin

Somewhere she had learned that if an interviewer remains silent, the interviewee will rush to fill the silence. ~ William Landay

Steve Coogan picks up enough to lecture an interviewer: This is a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about. Later it's claimed that Tristram Shandy was No. 8 on the Observer's list of the greatest novels, which cheers everyone until they discover the list was chronological. ~ Roger Ebert

My parents didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. We were comfortable, but I didn't go to Oxbridge, and yet every American interviewer I get says to me, 'You're related to Charles II! Your grandfather was a baronet!' And it's infuriating, because that is a part of my history, but you're trying to turn me into a posh boy, and I'm not. ~ Kit Harington

In the early 1990s, Donald Trump was nearly $1 billion in debt personally and $9 billion in debt corporately. An interviewer asked him if he was worried. He replied, "Worrying is a waste of time. Worrying gets in my way of working to solve these problems. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Interviewer ...In the case of "American Psycho" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain--or that Ellis was being cruel the way you said serious artists need to be willing to be.

DFW: You're just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it's a kind of black cynicism about today's world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what's always distinguished bad writing -- flat characters, a narrative world that's cliched and not recognizably human, etc. -- is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In da ~ David Foster Wallace

An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary. ~ Joseph McCarthy

Okay, it's like this. You wake up, you watch TV, and you get in the car and you listen to the radio. You go to your little job or your little school, but you're not going to hear about that on the 6:00 news, since guess what. Nothing is really happening. You read the paper, or if you're into that sort of thing you read a book, which is just the same as watching only even more boring. You watch TV all night, or maybe you go out so you can watch a movie, and maybe you'll get a phone call so you can tell your friends what you've been watching. And you know, it's got so bad that I've started to notice, the people on TV? Inside the TV? Half the time they're watching TV. Or if you've got some romance in a movie? What to they do but go to a movie? All those people, Marlin," he invited the interviewer in with a nod. "What are they watching?"
After an awkward silence, Marlin filled in, "You tell us, Kevin."
"People like me. ~ Lionel Shriver

I have a firm belief in such things as, you know, the water, the Earth, the trees and sky. And I'm wondering, it is increasingly difficult to find those elements in nature, because it's nature I believe in rather than some spiritual thing.
Interviewer: You're not a religious man?
No. And I do suppose that science has taken, to a large extent and for a number of people, has taken the place of religion.
Interviewer: What do you mean by that?
That one can have more belief in scientific cures or scientific miracles than you do in God miracles. It's inevitable that we will eventually diffuse into nothingness ... ~ Bill Blass

The story is told of Mother Theresa that when an interviewer asked her. "What do you say when you pray?" she answered, "I listen." The reporters paused a moment, then asked, "Then what does God say?" and she replied, "He listens." It is hard to imagine a more succinct way to get at the intimacy of contemplative prayer. ~ Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

I like things that are kind of falling apart," he admitted to another interviewer. "[Because] I come from a broken home, I guess. I like things that have been ignored or need to be put back together. ~ Barney Hoskyns

Honestly, Ada Lop was the best interviewer I ever met. She got you off your guard. She asked things nobody asked. You never got to know her, but she'd get every last drop out of you and in her cup. I always wear her wedding ring when I interview somebody. It has a black amber stone in it with a gold flaw, like an eye. And she did exactly like I asked. Whatever my father failed to do, she picked up; taught me how to fix a cannon and do my own taxes and do a perfect plié and that to perform, to really perform, you have to make yourself ugly at some point. Nothing real is pretty, she said. Only a doll is pretty. And a pretty doll drinks out of a tiny cup forever. A woman wants a big cup. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

I think it is quite untrue that it is standard journalistic practice to name the interviewer when quoting from an interview. ~ Fareed Zakaria

An extraordinary set of reminiscences, beautifully put together by an extremely sensitive, even gifted interviewer. It is a jewel. ~ Glenda Gilmore

Listen, Michael Jackson is really funny. To have time to spend with him and actually be around him, he's not what ... people think he is. Michael Jackson's like a black belt too, so he will kick your ass if you say something about him." In disbelief the interviewer replied "No, really?" to which Will said, "Yes, Michael Jackson kicked over my head! ~ Will Smith

I thought to do something good by giving an interview to People, which was exceedingly foolish of me. I asked Aaron [Asher] to tell you that the Good Intentions Paving Company had fucked up again. The young interviewer turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like disavowal, denunciation and excommunication. Well, we're both used to this kind of thing, and beyond shock. In agreeing to take the call, and make a statement I was simply muddle-headed. But if I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I'd have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers. I would have added that I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel, and that of course after three decades I understood perfectly well what you were saying about the writer's trade - how could I not understand, or miss suffering the same pains. Still our diagrams are different, and the briefest description of the differences would be that you seem to have accepted the Freudian explanation: A writer is motivated by his desire for fame, money and sexual opportunities. Whereas I have never taken this trinity of motives seriously. But this is an explanatory note and I don't intend to make a rabbinic occasion of it. Please accept my regrets and apologies, also my best wishes. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the dee ~ Saul Bellow

Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you'll ever be published or paid or even that you'll be able to finish the particular work you've begun. It isn't easy to persist amid all that. [ ... ] Sometimes when I'm interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my 'talent', my 'gift' or asks me how I discovered it. [ ... ] I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn't believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up. ~ Octavia E. Butler

In an interview, I lose control even of what I am, for it is the interviewer who edits me, finally, into what he thinks I am, and never have I been happy with someone else's version of my life after that person has spent an entire two or three hours fathoming it. ~ Mark Helprin

Interviewer (Louise Tucker): What did you want to be when you grew up? Have you always wanted to be a writer?
IllumBerg: When I was a child I was busy being a child. [...] ~ Natasha Illum Berg

I'm a Freddie Mercury fan. (In response to an interviewer backstage at a Queen concert at the LA Forum, who asked: Can I tell my viewers that Michael Jackson is a Queen fan? ~ Freddie Mercury

Interviewer: Would it be fair to describe you as a volatile player? Beckham: Well, I can play in the centre, on the right and occasionally on the left side. ~ David Beckham

Does this sound like you? You rock up for the job interview full of confidence, you know full well you can fill the position easily and possibly better than most, you're friendly, outgoing, and personable, and you scare the shit out of the interviewer. They don't know what to make of you. ~ Karl Wiggins

As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words."
"Yes, that's right," I agreed.
"I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?"
I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE."
My interviewer looked surprised, as though he'd expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. "That's your favorite word? Why?"
I tried not to smirk. "Because. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and I'll repeat them after him. I think that would be so great because I'm so empty I just can't think of anything to say. ~ Andy Warhol

Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I have concluded that the questions always look alike. I could always give the same answers. ~ Italo Calvino

Unfortunately, most of my secular friends would agree with Bill Gates, who considers religion a waste of time: "There's a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning," he told an interviewer. They view the church not as a change agent that can affect all of society but as a place where like-minded people go to feel better about themselves. ~ Philip Yancey

Jon Spiro had not hired Pex and Chips for their debating sills. In the job interview, they had only been set one task. A hundred applicants were handed a walnut and asked to smash it however they could. Only two succeeded. Pex had shouted at the walnut for a few minutes, then flattened it between his giant palms. Chips had opted for a more controversial method. He placed the walnut on the table, grabbed is interviewer by the ponytail, and used the man's forehead to smash the nut. Both men were hired on the spot. They quickly established themselves as Arno Blunt's most reliable leiutenants for in-house work. They were not allowed outside Chicago, as this could involve map reading, something Pex and Chips were not very good at. ~ Eoin Colfer

INTERVIEWER
Do you believe in God?
ECO
Why does one love a certain person one day and discover the next day that the love is gone? Feelings, alas, disappear without justification, and often without a trace.
INTERVIEWER
If you don't believe in God, then why have you written at such great length about religion?
ECO
Because I do believe in religion. Human beings are religious animals, and such a characteristic feature of human behavior cannot be ignored or dismissed. ~ Umberto Eco

I don't pretend to be a great interviewer; I don't even pretend to be good at my job. ~ Chelsea Handler

After a long discussion of the country's woes, the interviewer asked Bobby, "But you are an optimist?" Kennedy nodded and smiled his weary-eyed smile. "Just because you can't live any other way, can you?" he replied. ~ David Talbot

What was most striking about the long course of human events, Truman had concluded from his reading of history, were its elements of continuity, including, above all, human nature, which had changed little if at all through time. "The only new thing in the world is the history you don't know," he would one day tell an interviewer. ~ David McCullough

Interviewer: What is your greatest regret?
Gorey: That I don't have one ~ Edward Gorey

You care, you really care for me!" "Of course," Eric said. "How could you doubt it?" But it was not easy to believe that anyone cared for me; I sometimes failed to realize, I think, how much my parents cared for me. It is only now, reading the letters they wrote to me when I came to America fifty years ago, that I see how deeply they did care. And perhaps how deeply many others have cared for me - was the imagined lack of caring by others a projection of something deficient or inhibited in myself? I once heard a radio program devoted to the memories and thoughts of those who, like me, had been evacuated during the Second World War, separated from their families during their earliest years. The interviewer commented on how well these people had adjusted to the painful, traumatic years of their childhood. "Yes," said one man. "But I still have trouble with the three Bs: bonding, belonging, and believing." I think this is also true, to some extent, for me. ~ Oliver Sacks

Heather is the first interviewer to have ever caught me off guard. She has a razor sharp mind and a demeanor that could make her the next Barbara Walters. ~ Mark Joyner

And what are your interests and hobbies, Nicholas?" Annabel asked faintly, sounding like a cross between a television interviewer and a hostage. Nick considered this for a minute, and then said "I like swords." Annabel leaned over her plate and asked, her voice changing "You fence?" "Not exactly," Nick drawled. "I'm more freestyle. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

One useful trick, I discovered, is to avoid listening to the question of the interviewer, and answer with whatever I have been thinking about recently. Remarkably, neither the interviewers nor the public notices the absence of correlation between question and answer. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I was asked in an interview which was more important: money or love?
I told the interviewer that if he had to ask the question, he wouldn't understand the answer. ~ John Lennon

Since the 1980s, I've been known more for my TV work, I used to host 'Live at Jongleurs' and of course 'Grumpy Old Men,' and so it's really all come from there. It's been a funny career really, there are people that know me now as a TV person, a comedian, an interviewer - I've had people genuinely gobsmacked to find out I am a musician. ~ Rick Wakeman

When he went to PARC for his formal interview, Kay was asked what he hoped his great achievement there would be. "A personal computer," he answered. Asked what that was, he picked up a notebook-size portfolio, flipped open its cover, and said, "This will be a flat-panel display. There'll be a keyboard here on the bottom, and enough power to store your mail, files, music, artwork, and books. All in a package about this size and weighing a couple of pounds. That's what I'm talking about." His interviewer scratched his head and muttered to himself, "Yeah, right." But Kay got the job. ~ Walter Isaacson

The interviewer always learns something new from the interviewee. It opens up your mind to new ideas and the vast multiplicity of human experience. ~ Steve Cosson

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