Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny. "
Ira Glass
Air
Know
Saying
Related Quotes:
" I feel like dance, by its nature, goes so easily to grand and beautiful. "
Ira Glass
Feel
Like
Nature
" The pledge drive has everything going against it as broadcasting. It's repetitive. It's ad-libbed by people who can't ad-lib. It's about asking for money, which is something nobody wants to hear, even from their own relatives. "
Ira Glass
People
Going
Drive
" I don't tweet because I don't need another creative venue. I don't need another form for self-expression. I don't need another way to get my thoughts out to people. I have one. I'm good. "
Ira Glass
Good
Need
Creative
" I remember that in Baltimore, where I grew up, we would drive by the radio station and tower of WBAL, and I would try to picture the people inside and what they did there. "
Ira Glass
Try
Picture
Drive
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Someone
You
Words
" It's rare for me to read any fiction. I almost only read nonfiction. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures. People who call reading detective fiction or eating dessert a guilty pleasure make me want to puke. "
Ira Glass
Eating
Reading
People
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Think
Interesting
Fun
" One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that. "
Ira Glass
Live
Easy
Myself
" I never realized before this the emotional power of some really simple, corny tropes: people with top hats, people with batons, confetti going off, how important it is to smile. "
Ira Glass
Important
People
Simple
" There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon. "
Ira Glass
Sitting
Kind
Thought
" I was a temp secretary for a long time, and I went at it with a passion, and I tried to do a nice job in all my jobs. "
Ira Glass
Job
Nice
Passion
" It's tricky, performing the show live. Because when you're in a big auditorium, in front of 700 people, the natural tendency is to want to talk louder. You want to project. "
Ira Glass
Project
You
Want
" I suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio. When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny. "
Ira Glass
Know
People
Say
" I'm trying to make perfect moments. And those generate meaning. If you go deep enough in how to make a moment, very quickly you come to how narrative works - to what we are as a species, how we've come up with telling stories in scenes and images. "
Ira Glass
Moment
Deep
Meaning
" I liked the people at Brown, while I really disliked most of the fellow students I had met at Northwestern. "
Ira Glass
Really
Most
People
" I have been shocked at the number of people who don't watch television. "
Ira Glass
Number
Been
People
" The radio is good for taking somebody else's experience and making you understand what it would be like. Because when you don't see someone, but you hear them talking - and, uh, that is what radio is all about - it's like when someone is talking from the heart. Everything about it conspires to take you into somebody else's world. "
Ira Glass
Heart
Good
Experience
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Picture
Doing
People
" I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness. "
Ira Glass
Time
Feeling
Just
" Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I'm aware of what skilled journalists they are, but I find it hard because of the corny way they present it. "
Ira Glass
News
Media
Me
" Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people. "
Ira Glass
Bad People
World
People
" I didn't have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college. "
Ira Glass
Talent
Fiction
College
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Work
Success
Thinking
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Learn
Me
Story
" The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side. "
Ira Glass
Mission
Business
You
" I'll meet listeners who tell me what a great voice I have. But I don't have a great voice for radio. My voice is the utterly normal voice, but sheer repetition has made them think it's OK. Mick Jagger once was asked, 'What makes a hit song? He said, 'Repetition.' "
Ira Glass
Meet
Great
Voice
" 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. "
Ira Glass
Better
Think
Quick
" Harry Potter to me is a bore. His talent arrives as a gift; he's chosen. Who can identify with that? But Hermione - she's working harder than anyone, she's half outsider, right? Half Muggle. She shouldn't be there at all. It's so unfair that Harry's the star of the books, given how hard she worked to get her powers. "
Ira Glass
Right
She
Talent
" When I was a bad writer, I would consciously imitate other NPR writers who I thought were wonderful. I suppose that everyone's artistic practice is different. But I collaborate and sometimes don't agree at all with my collaborators' opinions. It forces you to understand why you don't agree with something: what's the fight you're picking. "
Ira Glass
Practice
Opinions
You
" I am such a do-goody, people-pleasing kid - or I was - I don't think I've ever been fired, not even from an ice cream shop, magician for kids' parties, not even in my early jobs in radio. "
Ira Glass
Kid
Ice
I Am