Intern Quotes

“By the end of my first week as an intern, I am just about ready to throw my pager out the window. A high window. Overlooking a trash compactor. Filled with highly corrosive acid.”

— Michelle Au

“All of us-employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves-are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous.”

— Ross Perlin

“His vital signs were taken, an electrocardiogram ... which revealed occasional ventricular premature contractions. An intern took his history ... and then he was promptly ... simply ... forgotten to death.”

— Paddy Chayefsky

“He'd gotten a botany internship thinking that he could use it to grow illicit, untaxed marijuana only to discover that every third botany intern had come in with the same plan.”

— James S.A. Corey

“We dragged Linc along. His current honey is working tonight."
"Still the intern?"
"Yeah." Helen sat on the curvy velvet chaise, made herself at home. "I'm starting to think he's
getting serious about her."
"And?"
"I don't know. She's a nice girl, raised well. Focused, which he could use, and independent,
which I appreciate."
"But he's your baby."
"But he's my baby," Helen agreed. "I miss the little boy sometimes, with the scabbed knees and
loose shoelaces. Still see him in that tall, gorgeous lawyer in the three-piece suit that strolls in and
out of my life now. And Jesus,”

— Nora Roberts

“I missed having her as my intern. I missed bossing her around. I really missed her bossing me around in return.”

— Christina Lauren

“I'm actually going in to ER as the new British intern.”

— Parminder Nagra

“All I know is movies; I went to school, but movies are my reference point for everything. I figured I'd have to P.A. or intern in the art department. Because the filmmaking process is so many people creating to make one piece of magic, so I've always wanted to be involved. With the acting, I doubted it.”

— Jordan Ladd

“Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems.”

— Alva Myrdal

“If I wasn't modelling, I'd probably be an intern somewhere, working for someone who interned the year before me.”

— Edie Campbell

“I mean, they're threatening - my career is over. You know, everything I've worked so hard. I've worked extremely hard since about 17 years old, you know, as a White House intern on up.”

— Andrea Mackris

“Communications is the number one major in America today. CNN had 25,000 applicants for five intern jobs this summer.”

— Larry King

“Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.”

— Lewis Thomas

“I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.”

— Lev Grossman

“If you knew the upward mobility that South Dakota's kids have gotten from the opportunity to intern and to work and to be employed and to have upward mobility in that company and move on, it's been phenomenal for South Dakota.”

— Bill Janklow

“SpaceX is a flat organization. Anyone gets to talk to anyone, and the best idea wins - even if it comes from an intern.”

— Gwynne Shotwell

“Our new intern sorts pot shards like some kind of savant. The other interns call himi Rain Man.”

— Alex Adams

“So it was sort of an odd time because I had been hired, but my paperwork hadn't gone through. So I worked as an intern during the government shutdown, as an intern, but I already had a job.”

— Monica Lewinsky

“When I was in college, I wanted to write for 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien,' and I was an intern there.”

— Mike Birbiglia

“Growing up in Nashville, especially in a music business family, means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.”

— Caitlin Rose

“I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybody sandwiches and then the doors close and then all the great creatives are doing the work.”

— Jake Johnson

“The name 'reservation' has a negative connotation among Native Americans - an intern camp of sorts.”

— John Russell

“I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.”

— Peter Coyote

“An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.”

— Edward St. Aubyn

“When I was a 21-year-old intern at CBS, I was told I had crossed eyes and shouldn't try to be on air. That's when I decided I was going to be behind the scenes.”

— Andy Cohen

“The distinction between "assistant" and intern" is a simple one: assistants are paid, interns are not.
But of course interns are paid, in experience.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

“Everyone wants to be a stylist. If you know that's your calling, then you need to intern as much a humanly possible. You need to go to fashion school if you can.”

— Rachel Zoe

“When I got out of college in 1991, I had four jobs in four different parts of L.A. There was I Love Juicy, a smoothie bar in Venice, and the Videotheque on Sunset Boulevard, across from the old Tower Records. I was also an intern at the 'Los Angeles Reader' in the Miracle Mile and at 'High Performance' magazine downtown.”

— Jenji Kohan

“The very first thing I tell every intern on the first day is that their internship exists solely on their resume. As far as I am concerned, they are a full-time member of my team. For all the negative stereotypes about millennials, you would be astounded by how hard they work when they believe their contribution matters.”

— Jay Samit

“For example, I was a White House intern the summer before I dropped out of law school. Everybody knew about it. I'd come home and go to church and everybody would say, 'Oh, my God. Demetri, you're working at the White House.'”

— Demetri Martin

“I've been in love with Washington ever since renting my very first apartment there many years ago while working as a Senate intern.”

— Danny Meyer

“My wife, Dixie, is evangelical Christian. We met in the Reagan White House, when she was a student intern. We're members of the Horizon Christian Fellowship Church.”

— Dinesh D'Souza

“Wait-something's gumming up Bosch. (Computers aren't as powerful as most people think; running even a small and rather stupid intern can really bog down a server.)”

— Charles Stross

“As a Facebook summer intern once told me, In my school's computer science department, there are more Daves than girls.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

“One feels almost laughably heavy-footed in pointing out that Mrs. Clinton's prim little book, It Takes a Village, proposes sexual abstinence for the young, and that the president was earnestly seconding this very proposal while using an impressionable intern as the physical rather than moral equivalent of a blow-up doll.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question 'What should I do with my life?' In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider's look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.”

— Akhil Sharma

“And to improve access to the UK publishing industry - I'm hoping to set up an internship or work experience for someone from a low-income background, as soon as we have the funds. While we don't have the funds, we won't have an intern.”

— Deborah Smith

“As praetor, Cicero was expected to take in promising pupils from good families to study law with him, and in May, after the Senate recess, a new young intern of sixteen joined his chambers. This was Marcus Caelius Rufus from Interamnia, the son of a wealthy banker and prominent election official of the Velina tribe. Cicero agreed, largely as a political favor, to supervise the boy's training”

— Robert Harris

“We also want to invest in the next generation of filmmakers. There have been hundreds of these filmmakers that have called us saying "Can we intern with you? Can we mentor under you?" And we want an opportunity to do that, as well. So, for those two reasons, we talked with our pastor and he gave us his blessing to kind of launch out and grow the movie ministry that we have.”

— Alex Kendrick

“I was working in a church in Florida as a youth intern, which means I really didn't do much other than staple stuff. I'm from Dallas, Texas, and every time my grandmother would call-she would call me any time of the day-I'd be home answering the phone. She was like, "What do you do all day?" and sarcastically I would say, "Well, I'm trying to chalk off the next year to spend time finding a band name." And she said, "Well mercy me, why don't you get a real job?" I thought, "Wait a minute. That's the perfect name." That kind of freed up my year but that's where the name came from.”

— Bart Millard

“You know I don't care if it's you know an intern or a full-time employee. I want to help them arrive at who they are or who they want to be in the world and that is one of the questions I ask them when I meet them. You know, who do they want to be.”

— Carol Friedman

“I'm going to help the committee regardless of any position I have. I will volunteer to be a summer intern.”

— Trey Gowdy

“Searching for funds to continue my skating career when I was 17, I called the Women's Sports Foundation in New York. The intern who answered the phone suggested that I might be a great candidate for the Travel and Training fund, and she sent me an application form. I applied for a grant. With the funds I was awarded, I bought a new pair of skates and a plane ticket to the 1988 National Championships, where I achieved my highest national finish. Four years later, I won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games.”

— Kristi Yamaguchi

“Rachel," came a raspy voice from the upper level, and both Trent and I turned. It was Quen, wrapped in a blanket as if it was a death shroud, the black-haired intern at his side, supporting him. His hair was plastered to his skull with sweat, and I could see him wavering as he stood there. "Don't touch Trenton," he said, his gravelly voice clear in the hush, "or I'm going to have to come down there ... and smack you around.”

— Kim Harrison

“Every day is President's Day when you have an intern!”

— David Letterman

“Compared to Clinton, I feel like a loser. I can't even get the intern to make me coffee!”

— David Letterman

“Even if corners were cut, (Iran-Contra) was a brilliant scheme. There is no possibility that anyone in any Democratic administration would have gone to such lengths to fund anti-Communist forces. When Democrats scheme from the White House, it's to cover up the President's affair with an intern. When Republicans scheme, it's to support embattled anti-Communist freedom fighters sold out by the Democrats.”

— Ann Coulter

“Anne Marie Smith flew to Washington to tell prosecutors about Gary Condit's attempt to get her to deny their affair. It looks bad. If it's found he lied about the intern and the mistresses, he could get 4-8 years in the White House.”

— Argus Hamilton

“Hillary Clinton's 506-page memoir has come out. So much of her personality shines through, that in the end, you, too, will want to sleep with an intern.”

— Craig Kilborn

“Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.”

— Dave Barry