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. Ira Glass Read Quote
I think people who live in New York don’t realize just how much time they spend talking about the subway. Ira Glass Read Quote
If you want somebody to tell you a story, one of the most easiest and effective ways is if you’re telling them a story. Ira Glass Read Quote
I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness. Ira Glass Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don’t just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you’re just like, ‘This is the part of the day when I’m looking for an idea.’ Ira Glass Read Quote
Smallville’ is like a Domino’s pizza. While you’re eating, you’re thinking, ‘This is good, and it reminds me of pizza, but there’s not enough flavor in each bite.’ That’s the feeling you have the entire time with ‘Smallville’ – that it’s just about to be good, but it never is. Ira Glass Read Quote
When I was in college, I was a semiotics major, which is this hopelessly pretentious body of French literary theory. Ira Glass Read Quote
