Safe

Having a pleasant conversation with a colleague this morning, until he remembered he had a bone to pick with me. I quoted him (anonymously!) in our departmental newsletter last Friday. He said he’s going to watch what he says to me from now on, to prevent being misquoted (accurately quoted more like). This is of concern to me, partly because I’ve upset someone, but mostly because I’m soon going to run out of source material if no one talks to me. I told him that he just needs to say that things are ‘off the record’ if he doesn’t want me to mention them, but he wasn’t convinced. Maybe I need some sort of safe word that people can say so that I’ll go easy on them? Any suggestions? “Yellow”?