When someone says something in an interview, the beauty of Twitter is that it's a platform for instantaneous response.
When you're interviewing someone, you're in control. When you're being interviewed, you think you're in control, but you're not.
When I interviewed a bloke wearing a balaclava on Newsnight. He refused to remove it and halfway through our interview he forgot he was wearing it, took a sip of water and couldn't find his mouth. It's quite hard to hold it together when that happens.
Generally, if you preface an interview request with, 'I'm an author writing a book,' for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors.
It's fun for me to go on other folks' talk shows. When you've endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food.
Anyone who agrees to be interviewed must decide where to draw the line between what is public and what is private. But the line can shift, depending on who is asking the questions. What puts someone on guard isn't necessarily the fear of being 'found out.' It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood.
Everybody has an angle. The only time I say no to an interview is when someone says they don't have an angle. I know right away that that's not honest.
I hated working red carpets, I hated the whole celebrity interview process. I just realized I'd rather be the person somebody wanted to ask questions to than the person asking the questions.
I'm not the interview-giving kind.
At first, when my agent told me, 'They want you to do an interview, a piece for '60 Minutes,' I was like, 'What is '60 Minutes?''
When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office, he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like 'Leadership' by Rudolph Giuliani. I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.
For the most part, if somebody approaches me and says, 'I'd like to interview you,' who am I to say no, when I spend all my days going, 'Hello, you don't know me. I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you have a little time?'
I think sometimes people get distracted in interviews.
It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed.
To be sure, the hard-to-come-by interview - the 'get' - isn't an uncommon phenomenon here at 'The Daily Show.' We've had high-profile dignitaries, low-profile indignitaries, stars you've heard of, authors you should have read.
I never use the word 'I' when I interview someone. I think it's irrelevant.
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.
He was interviewed in the early '60s by a young novelist, Pati Hill.
When you are being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, you are the prisoner in the dock: assumed guilty unless proved innocent, under intense pressure, on the defensive. There are very few people who can look relaxed in that position.
For me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and I'm there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means it's on the record.
I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.
This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English.
I once interviewed Anthony Burgess on the radio. I played pop records between the conversation.
Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they'd be my best friend. Other times you're being interviewed by a complete jerk.
Live interviews are more difficult to distort.
