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.

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.

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.

You can criticize yourself to a point to do something better, or you criticize yourself to a point where you inhibit yourself.

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.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

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