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.
Ira GlassThe 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.
Ira GlassFor 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 GlassOne 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 GlassWhere radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.
Ira GlassDon'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.
Ira GlassEverything is more compelling when you talk like a human being, when you talk like yourself.
Ira GlassI am mostly a pretty worried person. In conversations, I am always worried about what to say.
Ira GlassThe entire culture was organized for people who are happy. People who are miserable need reassurance that other people are miserable.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassWe're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
Ira GlassHonestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.
Ira GlassIt'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.
Ira GlassI don't think I ever played any sports recreationally for my own pleasure. I was bad at them from the start.
Ira GlassYou 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.
Ira GlassI was a chubby, unathletic kid and conformed to every possible stereotype you could imagine of someone who would end up in public broadcasting.
Ira GlassIt's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassI 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 GlassHonestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I cant even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.
Ira GlassIt 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.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassI 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."
Ira GlassYou can criticize yourself to a point to do something better, or you criticize yourself to a point where you inhibit yourself.
Ira GlassI'm going to go with Chihuahua, just because I can't think of anything more frightening than a giant Chihuahua.
Ira GlassWe live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassI 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.
Ira GlassIn 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.
Ira Glass