Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

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.

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

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

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 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.