Alice Munro, the Canadian short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature earlier this week, was once asked in an interview whether a certain autobiographical work was drawn from diaries she kept at the time. She replied, "I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people."
Which reminded me of the possibly apocryphal occasion on which Richard Pryor, fresh from a brush with the law and mortality brought on by his drug use, was being interviewed on network TV by the imitable Barbara Walters. All earnest, she leaned in and, in a tone of portentous cross-examination, a serious journalist doing her job, asked, "What does taking cocaine make you feel like?" He is supposed to have replied, "It's make you feel like having some more cocaine."
I say "possibly apocryphal" because, bopping around hither and thither on the Internet, I can't confirm that this moment ever happened. Pryor did apparently say, "The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is that vampires are allergic to bullshit."
