It doesn’t take much to alter the tone or meaning of someone’s words in an interview with some editing. Here are a few examples from the Guardian’s recent Q+A with Daniel Clowes before and after:
What would your super power be?
ANSWER:
As a teenager I remember wishing I had the powers of Plastic Man so that I could stretch my arm downstairs to retrieve junk food from the kitchen without having to get up from my chair.
PRINTED:
The powers of Plastic Man.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
ANSWER:
Once, in a review of the Ghost World movie, the critic John Simon quoted extensively from a rambling interview of mine to point out what an inarticulate idiot I was. I believe I used the word “really” something like 9 times in the course of two sentences.
PRINTED:
"Really."
If you could go back in time, where would you go?
ANSWER:
I’d like to think I’d go kill Hitler or verify the divinity of Christ, but really I’d like to see what my neighbourhood was like when my house was built in 1912. Or perhaps to hang out in Bodega Bay while Hitchcock was shooting The Birds.
PRINTED:
I like to think I'd go kill Hitler.
