"And I’ve also gotten into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships and then I throw a verse about politics in there."

"That’s a trick that I’ve learned from other songwriters, because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics or social comment. A blues song like 'Rough and Twisted,' you talk about women and everything, but then you throw in stuff that’s obviously political: 'The only club was called conspiracy.' 'What they wanted was tyranny.' So you find yourself using these tricks."

Said Mick Jagger, in an interview at "Mick Jagger Knows He May Have Played His Last Rolling Stones Show" (NYT).

ADDED: I like this part about philosophy: 

"They’re always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and always disagreeing with their masters. I was reading this book on Kant. They’re quite rude to each other and then they have to make up later, and I can’t understand what they’re really talking about. Was Kant a Christian? Was he an atheist?"

The interviewer, David Marchese, enthuses, "I think it’s cool that you’re reading Kant." And Mick responds coolly: "Well, it’s all vaguely fashionable."

"And I’m never going to call somebody fat because they’re fat. I’m going to call you fat if you called me Hitler."

"And the best part about that is it hurts them. It hurts them more than if they were to call me Hitler because they have to look in the mirror every day. I know I’m not Hitler. They know they’re fat."

Said Greg Gutfeld, in "The Interview/Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure" (NYT).

I'm reading and listening to "Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening."

This is an interview in the NYT (free access link to the edited transcript/I listened to the full audio in the NYT audio app). Here's an excerpt. The boldface is the interviewer David Marchese:

You’re not willing to say that there were aspects of political life in the era of kings that were inferior or provided less liberty for people than political life does today? You did a thing that people often do where they confuse freedom with power. Free speech is a freedom. The right to vote is a form of power. So the assumption that you’re making is that through getting the vote in the early 20th century in England and America, women made life better for themselves.

Do you think it’s better that women got the vote? I don’t believe in voting at all.

Do you vote? No. Voting basically enables you to feel like you have a certain status. “What does this power mean to you?” is really the most important question. I think that what it means to most people today is that it makes them feel relevant. It makes them feel like they matter. There’s something deeply illusory about that sense of mattering that goes up against the important question of: We need a government that is actually good and that actually works, and we don’t have one.

"You can go to your camper and do whatever you want. I even get television in there.... The camper taught me how to watch TV.... I go to YouTube."

"Anything. And everything. There’s so many things on YouTube. You’ve got Ibsen, you got Chekhov, you got Strindberg. All on the internet. I even like TikTok when I see it from time to time.... TikTok. Yeah. I saw, like, a 14-year-old girl who was deaf, her whole life, and they do something with her, and she actually starts to hear for the first time! How 'bout that? And sometimes the dogs, they rescue them. You watch the guy go in there and bring this beautiful, sad dog back to, uh, being somewhat — aware of things.... Well, I love that stuff!"

Said Al Pacino, quoted in "The Interview/Al Pacino Is Still Going Big" (NYT).

I'm quoting from the recording. The transcript is edited down a bit and it misses some of the feeling. I thought the interviewer, David Marchese, rushed by some of the best material Pacino seemed to want to hand him. For example, when Pacino spoke of the beautiful, sad dog becoming aware, Marchese intruded with "You're such a softy," categorizing Pacino's feeling as shallow sentimentality as opposed to some more subtle existentialism.

And one of the topics was Pacino's nearly dying of of Covid.

"I needed to come back to the city. A lot of it for me has to do with not having to drive."

"Because not driving when you live in the suburbs, or being a quasi driver — I have a lot of anxiety about it, and when I’m in the city I can go anywhere I want. I feel free. I feel like an actual grown-up. [What is it about driving?] Ugh! There’s the car itself: tires falling off, a blow out, a car exploding. One time I was driving and the front hood started rattling and the whole drive I pictured the hood of the car flying up and then my crashing and not only killing myself but killing tons of people. I hate it! I hate changing lanes. I hate merging. I hate trucks. Everything about it is hateful. Also, you’re going so [expletive] fast! A slight miscalculation and it’s disaster."

Said Roz Chast, quote in "Roz Chast Knows You’ll Always Regret Leaving the City for the Suburbs" (NYT).

That's an interview with David Marchese, published a few weeks ago, noticed today because it was linked at the bottom of the new David Marchese interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, blogged in the previous post. 

Roz Chast has a new book: "I Must Be Dreaming."

"First of all, I know Bobby from the time I met Maria. I always liked him. But when I look at him being suspicious of certain things, I ask myself..."

"Can anyone really judge him in a fair way? Because here’s a guy who has had an uncle assassinated, a father assassinated. No one wants to open up the files. So you must say to yourself, What is the reason for that? You start not trusting governments. I don’t live with this kind of suspicion, because nothing ever happened to me that makes me feel like that. But a lot of things happened to him, so this is where he is coming from. I’m not saying rightfully or wrongfully. I’m just saying I can see why someone like him is the way he is."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, responding to a NYT interviewer, in "Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally)." 

Schwarzenegger is promoting a new book (which has a Jordon Petersonesque title: "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life").

The interviewer, David Marchese, had asked "what do you make of R.F.K. Jr.’s anti-vax, conspiracist turn?"

Marchese follows up — evoking the Moynihan meme you are not entitled to your own facts — "But we can be sympathetic to someone and what happened to them and also say facts are facts." 

Schwarzenegger seems unaware  of the old meme. He says: "His facts are different. I understand what you’re saying, but there’s people out there who have their own facts."