Transcripts
Season 2

Pens (S02E04)

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Questions and Answers


Maria: Rory, do you usually use a pen or a pencil?

Rory: I like using pens. It's smoother and less messy than a pencil, especially if I'm using gel pens or roller balls.

Maria: Do you prefer to use a pen or a pencil for writing?

Rory: Almost always a pen. For the reasons that I mentioned before. I'll sometimes use a pencil. So if I have, like, a fear of making mistakes and then that gives me an excuse to rub things out, but usually it's pens.

Maria: When was the last time you bought a pen or a pencil?

Rory: I can't remember the exact time, actually. It was sometime last year, and I remember doing it because it was online and it was these thin-tip gel pens. They were from China. And I had to order them specifically because I found one of them a few years ago and it ran out of ink. So I went to order some new ones.

Maria: How often do you buy pens and pencils?

Rory: Not too often, actually. I'm quite good at looking after them. So like I say, the last time I went out and bought one was a year ago.

Maria: Did you like to write with a pen or pencil when you were a child?

Rory: Um, yeah, actually, I loved it. You could always say that writing is in my blood because my mom and dad are both journalists and I'm an author. So I really like to write when I was younger and I like doing it now.

Maria: Being an author, do you use some special pen, your favorite pen?

Rory: Yeah, I always have a favorite pen. I think a lot of people who write are like this. There's always one pen that you're attached to for quite some time.

Maria: How would you feel if someone gave you a pen or a pencil as a gift?

Rory: Um, I think it depends if I like the kind of pen or pencil that they bought for me, then I would be extremely happy. But if I don't like it so much, then I would still pretend to be happy, of course, but maybe I would put it away in a file somewhere and not use it unless I was really desperate.

Maria: Would you pay a lot for a pen or pencil?

Rory: I think it depends on how much is a lot. I wouldn't pay more than twenty pounds or I think it's about two thousand rubles for a box of pens and I certainly wouldn't pay that amount for a single pen. I think maybe ten pounds or a thousand rubles is the maximum for a single pen or a box of pens. Anything more than that is just excessive.

Maria: So you wouldn't use some fancy "Parker" pen?

Rory: Um, no, I don't believe in that. I think it's a con because the pen that I use right now, which costs I don't know, I think it was fifty rubles. It writes just as well and it lasts forever. So I don't see a problem with using it.

Maria: What about fountain pens with ink?

Rory: Well it's like I said before when we were talking about pencils, I think pencils are quite messy and I find fountain pens quite messy as well. That's just for me. I think other people can use them quite effectively, but I can't.

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