Ira Glass Quotes

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Ira Glass

Profession : Journalist

Birth : March 3, 1959

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.

Ira Glass

Like, radio is closer to a Tumblr, or a blog, or Twitter, than it is to television, I think.

Ira Glass

The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side.

Ira Glass

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

Unless you work for '60 Minutes', your life is: You do stories about things, and nothing happens as a result.

Ira Glass

I feel like, in general in my work life, my main goal has been to just be in a situation where I'm not bored with my job. That's been the entire principle. Got my wish.

Ira Glass

When you're working in public radio, you don't have any money to advertise.

Ira Glass

I can only control what I can control.

Ira Glass

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

I'm a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who performed at kids' parties. I can still perform a vanish, credibly, and I still, in special circumstances, will make a balloon animal.

Ira Glass

Like most people in radio - and in magic - I'm not cool. I know people who are hip, and I can feel distance between them and me.

Ira Glass

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, 'Oh, this thought is just occurring to me right now' - and speaking sincerely.

Ira Glass

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

I'm just not very funny.

Ira Glass

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

In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.

Ira Glass

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

Ira Glass

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

I've read the poker books, but at this point, everybody who's playing has read the poker books. I feel like I'm knowledgeable enough to understand what's going on in the game, and I understand why I suck. And I'm not sure if I'll ever rise beyond that to the level where I don't suck.

Ira Glass

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I can't even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.

Ira Glass