"Hey, Richard, what was it like to be on fire?"

Larry King asks Richard Pryor in an old interview, which CNN re-aired yesterday, the day that the great comedian died. (Richard Pryor, as you probably know, set himself on fire free-basing cocaine.)

"It was... scary... and petrifying... and... awesome... You know, fire, you know how fire looks red and stuff. It's really orange and white. I didn't know that until after it was over. I said, wait a minute. This is fire but it don't look like it."

"But the pain... It must be..."

"Excruciating, is the word."

Later, King asks him if he has days when he gets depressed. He says:

"Very. I have days when I just don't know who I am, where I am, what I'm doing. But then, it comes back and says, you're Richard, and you're here, and you had a shot, and you messed it up, so you gotta stay here." He has a terribly sad expression on his face now. "'Cause we're all gonna die. We just don't get to choose when."