Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I think stories get better the more people try to amuse themselves. "

Related Quotes:

" I think the name of the show, 'This American Life' - we named it that just because it seemed like it made the thing feel big. But we don't think about whether it's an American story or not. We happen to be Americans. I think for the stories to work, they have to be universal. "

" At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting. "

" Generally the aesthetics of broadcast journalism seem to me to be incredibly primitive. "

" It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud. "

" When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves. "

" I like excess. And giant M&M's. "

" In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence. "

" I'm just not very funny. "

" My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a '70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school. "

" I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can. "

" Not owning a car anymore, I feel like I'm barely an American. I miss it. And I barely ever get to listen to the radio in the car, which is the best place for radio. "

" You get into this situation, performing for T.V., where you have to speak with utter sincerity. It's just like the radio. You have to say it like you mean it, even though the thing you're saying is actually planned out. "

" Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot but in fact sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would. "

" I started out doing production work on promos, stuff like that. I didn't think it was cool to be working for NPR. I didn't need anything to be cool. I just wanted something to do that would be interesting. It was fun. I didn't think of it as anything else but fun. "

" I don't go looking for stories with the idea of wrongness in my head, no. But the fact is, a lot of great stories hinge on people being wrong. "

" There is a feeling, when you listen to radio, that it's one person, and they're talking to you, and you really feel their presence as one person. "

" Radio is more powerful the closer we mimic the way we actually speak to each other. That's why Howard Stern is such a great radio talent. People on his show are actually speaking to each other. You might not like what they're saying, but they're real conversations. "

" I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me. "

" Writing is just very difficult. I'm an adequate performer. And I think I have a special talent as an editor. Editing is what I do best. "

" I'm in production year round. I work long hours. I have a dog and a wife. There's not a lot of available time for consuming any culture: T.V., movies, books. When I read, it's generally magazines, newspapers and web sites. "

" For me to do a story, something has to happen to someone. It's a story in the way you learn what a story is in third grade, where there is a person, and things happen to them, and then something big happens, and they realize something new. "

" Radio is for driving. "

" I don't think I'm better than everyone else at anything, but I am very quick at organizing a big mass of interview tape into a structure. "

" You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space. "

" Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words. "

" People are generally forced to change. We don't want to change, and then something absolutely forces us to realize that what we are doing isn't working or that our picture of the world is wrong. We fail. So we change. "

" Starting in the 1970s, American cars started to lose market share to foreign cars. It was clear what was happening - these better-made foreign car companies were encroaching on the U.S., and the U.S. car makers had less than half of their own country's market. "

" I don't know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day. "

" Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio. "

" If you date one woman a year, times 10 years, and that's 10 women. "