Martin Amis

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INTERVIEWER

Do you get someone to type the final version?

AMIS

No, no. When I finish a novel, I do think that whether or not I should get a prize for writing the book, I should certainly get a prize for typing it. The Booker Prize is for typing. Even going from second draft to final draft, hardly a page survives without being totally rewritten. You know that the very act of retyping will involve you in thirty or forty little improvements per page. If you don’t retype, you are denying that page those improvements.

-- Martin Amis at The Paris Review

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Morning Air

Every year I have to rediscover how nice it is to walk around outside for a few minutes. It's the cool morning air, both bracing and stirring. If my right foot were well, I'd be taking my morning walks. Maybe I can get much of the benefit just by walking around the back yard with the cats. It feels a little too much like I am coming out of my jail cell. Maybe you have to have a little money and a few friends and a girl to feel like a free man - and probably a car.

Chris Rock

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One thing that was so exciting to many people, including you and me, when Obama got in was the hope, however delusional, that his election signaled some kind of racial progress in America. When, in fact, I don’t think there’s been much at all.


Grown people, people over 30, they’re not changing. But you’ve got kids growing up.

Your own kids are all girls, right?

All girls. I mean, I almost cry every day. I drop my kids off and watch them in the school with all these mostly white kids, and I got to tell you, I drill them every day: Did anything happen today? Did anybody say anything? They look at me like I am crazy.

And you think this change is generational? That maybe it has nothing to do with Obama?

It’s partly generational, but it’s also my kids grew up not only with a black president but with a black secretary of State, a black joint chief of staff, a black attorney general. My children are going to be the first black children in the history of America to actually have the benefit of the doubt of just being moral, intelligent people.

[...]

I remember when I was a kid and Jack Kennedy had little kids in the White House. Are your daughters taken by the fact that there are young girls in the White House?

Yeah, but you’ve got to remember, they’re so young. Zahra was 4 when Obama was nominated. So as far as they’re concerned, there have always been little black girls in the White House.

-- Chris Rock at Vulture.com

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