The Name of the Father

The first time I came home
with a hangover – I was 21
or 22 – I was in the kitchen
making a cup of tea. In those days
all I drank was Guinness – my dad
leant over to me and said:
‘Do you drink spirits?’ I said:
‘No, I don’t.’ He said:
‘Don’t.’ That’s stayed with me
all my life. I don’t drink spirits
at all. It was profound because
my father was a man of
very few words but,
when he did speak,
it was emphatic.

Taken from an interview with Liam Neeson in the Metro, 27th January 2012. Submitted by Marika Rose.

This Is That

Do you know why teachers
use me? Because I speak
in tongues. I write metaphors.
Every one of my
stories is a metaphor
you can remember. The
great religions are all
metaphor. We
appreciate things like
Daniel and the lion’s
den, and the Tower of Babel.

People remember these
metaphors because they
are so vivid you can’t
get free of them and that’s
what kids like in school. They
read about rocket ships
and encounters in space,
tales of dinosaurs. All
my life I’ve been running
through the fields and picking
up bright objects.

I turn one over and say,
Yeah, there’s a story.

Taken from an interview with Ray Bradbury, via Genealogy of Religion. Submitted by Marika Rose.

I have a phobia

I have a phobia
of leaving my arm
out of a car window
when I’m driving.
I think it has something to do
with playing the guitar
and needing my arm.

Slash interviewed in the Guardian. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

What did you talk about?

Early ambitions to work in the arts,
old cinemas, theatres and pubs,
home ownership,
Eddie Izzard’s theory on cat psychology;

Cubism, Aperol, synaesthesia,
the size of Yorkshire, Venice,
Harry Potter, Peggy Guggenheim,
marathon training, Glasgow, siblings,
sleeper trains, bleak landscapes,
the attentiveness of the staff,

plus sailing stories, basking sharks
and how ‘Jaws’ has traumatised
us both for life.

We had a lot in common.

Taken from a Guardian interview with a couple who had been on a blind date, 8th January 2010. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

First Night

If you and I meet up
and have a fabulous evening,
I will try and match you,
for the rest of our relationship,
with my image of
that fabulous evening.

But you are all sorts of other things.
And when I find that I then
can’t match up the magic
of that fabulous bubbly first night
to our second night I become
depressed and disgruntled

and I start hating you.

By Rishi Dastidar, taken from an interview with Rupert Everett in the Metro, 15th June 2010.