We want to be big... we want to be a big band, but we don't want to be your best friends.
The manager is by himself. He can't mingle with his players. I enjoyed my players, but I could not socialize with them so I spent a lot of time alone in my hotel room. Those four walls kind of close in on you.
It's not a good thing to be friends with people you're covering. There's just no point in doing it. It's tempting, but they're not going to consider you their friend anyway. They just know that you're somebody that can do something for them.
As soon as I started working at the 'Los Angeles Times,' people warned me not to get too close to artists because it could make it difficult to review their work, and you can never really tell if the 'friendship' is genuine.
A lord may love the men that he commands, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die.
I should have never allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was.
And you can't really cover people critically that you're friends with.
In my business, if I get too close to you and you die, it hurts me. And so you develop a natural inclination not to be close to the patient, so that if things don't work out ideally, you can still get up the next day and care for the next patient.
It's difficult for me to work with women, because I find that direct references are made back to me too fast. Working with men, it gives it a little distance.
A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.
I am not a librarian of my own work. It's a good thing not to be too involved with what you have done.
I don't have bad relationships with my players. But I don't get into long conversations with them either.
Often there is a wall between the journalist and the star because there is usually not much time to get to know a person, and the star is always asked the same questions, and may be defensive.
To keep your job, you fire others or bench them or trade them. You have to do the thinking for 25 guys, and you can't be too close to any of them.
When you're directing, you're right at the coal face, always exhausted, often emotional - and I'll enjoy being a couple of steps back from that and simply helping where I can.
I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.
We keep some distance between ourselves when we're not working. I think that's a really good thing.
I'm very good at separating things, and one of the things that I've always separated is that my business from one artist to the next has nothing to do with each other.
In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.
The best doctors found a middle position where they were neither overwhelmed by their feelings nor estranged from them. That was the most difficult position of all, and the precise balance - neither too detached nor too caring - was something few learned.
If you're doing an interview, you need conversational tension. After you talk to them, you're not going to have a relationship with them, they're not going to like you, they're not going to be your friend.
One of the things about Fleetwood Mac is, when we're not together, we don't talk a lot or keep in touch. We keep a healthy distance.
Koeman may have been head coach at Feyenoord, but I never felt like he was my manager, as I was in the youth team. I don't even know if he knew I was there. I don't have anything to prove to him.
That's because I didn't have to work with Madea. I only had to work with Madea once, and that was at the barbecue and I didn't have to get close to her.
