Thom Yorke on Rookie Magazine

Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich, introducing themselves as being from Atoms for Peace, answer teenage readers' letters for Rookie, and the last one draws a story from Yorke about his own face. A reader who had heart surgery at two worries that boys will mind her foot-long scar. Imperfections, Yorke says, are what you end up loving in a person. He was born with one eye shut and had several operations, and at her age was sure girls would find it ugly. An old woman who drank in the pub where he worked “was the first person who really said to me it's the nicest thing about you”, and she was drunk all the time, but he went with it. Godrich says it had never occurred to him.

The rest is crushes, nerves and break-ups. A shy 16-year-old should seize the day, or write the boy a note, because the things you did not do add up, and by 40 you wonder how long the list is. A 14-year-old who gets a jolt like electricity when a boy talks to her has a crush, and the next job is finding out who he really is. Breaking up with someone because they bore you is fine, done with a little tact; if they say the same thing over and over and your brain feels like it is pouring out of your ears like soup, one of them says, ask for the bill. To a 15-year-old dreading a first date, one of them says “you might as well just be yourself because sooner or later you're going to be yourself anyway”. Boys who act boisterous are mostly shy underneath, and a girl who chases a boy gets called a bunny boiler where a boy gets called romantic, which they agree is not fair. A 19-year-old who wonders about sleeping with someone else is told that means she is human.