His interview consisted of "a few superficial questions", he recalled in his memoir, Into the Wind.
Instead of asking superficial questions of many people, he asked detailed questions of a few.
"A story is like a magnet dragged through randomness," Yorke writes, but while he elegantly untangles the deepest roots of storytelling, he also honours the human need for truth and sense with some more superficial questions: why do series tend to "jump the shark" round about season three, for example, or why is clunky exposition – particularly in medical dramas – so appallingly comical?
Sarah Kendzior, a political writer, chose to focus on Mr Comey's ABC interview, criticising "superficial questions".
It is not sufficient to skim the board papers, ask a couple of superficial questions, eat the lovely meal, and be on your merry way home.
But beyond these superficial questions, you should also dig a little deeper into the financial implications of your death, notes financial advisor Don Roork of AssetDynamics Wealth Management in Toledo, Ohio.
Of course, "Access Hollywood" may be "news" of the fluffier variety, so there's not too much concern about, you know, journalistic integrity in deferring one of the many superficial questions actors get pommelled with as they walk to the venue to some random viewer who has mastered the art of using Facebook properly (or, as the case may be, is just barely managing it).
Most gay men are hypersensitive to superficial questions, like sexual preferences, or if I feel feminine when I'm bottoming.
In the imagination of Orhan Pamuk, the answers to these seemingly superficial questions are stepping stones to the fundamental stories of Turkey today: one man's attempt to make his fortune becomes the story of mass urban migration, his stolen bride the story of love warped by traditional mores, the gang wars in his neighborhood the story of ethnic tensions and nationalist terrorism.
