Top 165 Quotes & Sayings by Ira Glass - Page 3

I played no sports well. Because I was a boy in the United States Of America, I was forced into Little League and played horrible Little League baseball, and played football and basketball in school situations where I was forced to.

We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

It takes a while. It's gonna take you a while. It's normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

I dont know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.

I don't think I ever played any sports recreationally for my own pleasure. I was bad at them from the start.

You'll hit gold more often if you simply try out a lot of things.

I remember clearly that when I was little it was explained to me [that] the way that babies were made was that God put the baby into some lady's stomach, right? And, at some point, I learned how it really happened, and really that was the beginning of the end of my belief in God. Up until that point, it had always been a really weird act of intervention on God's part.

Don't wait till you're older, or in some better job than you have now. Don't wait for anything. Don't wait till some magical...idea drops into your lap. That's not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now.

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I cant even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.

For people starting public radio shows, one of the things you have to do is you have to talk every single public radio station into picking you up.

I just feel like there's so many movies I haven't seen that I want to see, that I would never go back to the same one. It's funny because all my friends, they have movies that they've seen over and over again.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

I cannot stress enough that the answer to a lot of your life's questions is often in someone else's face. Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people's faces.

I'm going to go with Chihuahua, just because I can't think of anything more frightening than a giant Chihuahua.

I think the thing that I wish somebody would ask me is just to ask about the business side of the radio show. I feel like I actually work very hard to make sure the business side of the radio show runs, and no one has any interest in how a public radio show is run. And rightly so.

I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be.

Many times I see you as a portrait of torture.

You just want to try a bunch of stuff, because you don't know what's going to be great.

I dont meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.

...these stories are a kind of beacon. By making stories full of empathy and amusement and the sheer pleasure of discovering the world, these writers reassert the fact that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

I didnt have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.

I dont 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.

I wish that someone had said to me that it's normal to feel lost for a little while.

It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.

Honestly, I don't see movies more than once.

I remember when I first got married, there was a certain amount of internet traffic on the subject of, "Who is this beard who is allegedly married to Ira Glass? Obviously, he's gay."

Brad Pitt is really game to talk about whatever and is really fun to talk to and was totally up for discussing anything.

The entire culture was organized for people who are happy. People who are miserable need reassurance that other people are miserable.

It is only by going through a volume of work that... your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through.

I seen a pig so big it’d block out the sun.

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.

I don't think I've ever stolen anything.

Nobody tells people who are beginners - and I really wish somebody had told this to me - that all of us who do creative work... get into it because we have good taste.

You just have to fight your way through.

You will be fierce. You will fearless. And you will make work you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be.

I was a chubby, unathletic kid and conformed to every possible stereotype you could imagine of someone who would end up in public broadcasting.

Where do ideas come from? Ideas come from other ideas.

...uncorny, human sized drama

I don't like that whole "art should challenge you" thing. Because I don't feel like art actually does challenge you. I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything.

I think the most famous person I've ever met is Brad Pitt.

Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now.

The truth is, I just don't have that much time to see movies. So if I get two hours where I can actually see a film, I don't want to go backwards, I want to go forwards.

Everything is more compelling when you talk like a human being, when you talk like yourself.

Brad Pitt is so good-looking there's a lightbulb inside of him shooting good-looking-ness in all directions.

I dont take care of my voice at all, which is one reason that I sound as bad as I do.