This much I know: David Remnick

My earliest memory is the Kennedy assassination. I was in kindergarten and the headmaster intoned the dramatic news over the loudspeaker. Then we were told, weirdly, to take a nap until our parents came. Language is the great human invention and to be a master of that, a real master, is to me an astonishing thing. Like every non-fiction writer, I started out thinking I'd write fiction. But I grew up with disabled parents and knew I had to make a living. I didn't have the notion that I would take two or three years on the largesse of home and see if I could become Philip Roth. I'm just as happy seeing a Godard film as I am seeing a Bruce Willis movie. But I'm very unhappy in the theatre. Nine times out of 10 I'll wonder why they are shouting and spitting so much. The last time I cried was watching The West Wing . For people like me, The West Wing was an alternate political reality in which people were working hard to do good and noble things. My worst habit is excessive work. I wake up thinking about work and go to bed thinking about it. I'm also terribly impatient, which is not a good mindset for an editor. When I was 19, I was a busker on the Paris metro. I told my parents I was studying at the Alliance Française. An Australian collected the money for me. He'd just arrived from Kenya where he'd helped reap the hash harvest and had a family-sized shampoo bottle full of hash oil. It was a good time. I met Bob Dylan once. By that time he looked like Jesus in a cowboy suit. He didn't say much. It was 10 or 15 minutes, but it seemed like three and a half hours. I know a little about a lot. That's the psyche of a journalist. I look at people who know a lot about one thing with awe. I've never fulfilled my ambitions. I'm always disappointing myself. But I don't have regrets either. The Bridge: the Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick (Macmillan, £20)