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 am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say.
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 suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio.
I don't think I ever played any sports recreationally for my own pleasure. I was bad at them from the start.
The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.
I seen a pig so big it’d block out the sun.
Where do ideas come from? Ideas come from other ideas.
I didnt have any particular talent for fiction. I took a class in college.
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.
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.
But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake.
...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.
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.
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.
I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot.
In some theoretical way I know that a half-million people hear the show. But in a day-to-day way, there's not much evidence of it.
What nobody tells people who are beginners… is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not… your taste is why your work disappoints you… We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this… 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 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.
You just want to try a bunch of stuff, because you don't know what's going to be great.
I was a chubby, unathletic kid and conformed to every possible stereotype you could imagine of someone who would end up in public broadcasting.
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 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.
You just have to fight your way through.
I think the most famous person I've ever met is Brad Pitt.
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.
You'll hit gold more often if you simply try out a lot of things.
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.
You can criticize yourself to a point to do something better, or you criticize yourself to a point where you inhibit yourself.
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.
We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.
Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now.
...uncorny, human sized drama
I dont meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.
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.
Many times I see you as a portrait of torture.
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.
Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I cant even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.
Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.
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 wish that someone had said to me that it's normal to feel lost for a little while.
Honestly, I don't see movies more than once.
I can only control what I can control.
You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.
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."
I dont know how to read. I get all my news from Jon Stewart every day.
But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time.
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.
Just when did I get to the point when staying at a hotel wasn't fun?
Great stories happen to those who can tell them.
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 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.
Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.
It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.
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.
Brad Pitt is really game to talk about whatever and is really fun to talk to and was totally up for discussing anything.
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.'
I dont take care of my voice at all, which is one reason that I sound as bad as I do.
You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all... If that happens, you're doing it right.
If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get lucky.
I'm going to go with Chihuahua, just because I can't think of anything more frightening than a giant Chihuahua.
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.
Brad Pitt is so good-looking there's a lightbulb inside of him shooting good-looking-ness in all directions.
I don't think I've ever stolen anything.
We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
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.
The entire culture was organized for people who are happy. People who are miserable need reassurance that other people are miserable.
