Ira Glass quote: "I've read the poker books, but at this point, everybody who's playing has read the poker books. I feel like I'm knowledgeable enough to understand what's going on in the game, and I understand why I suck. And I'm not sure if I'll ever rise beyond that to the level where I don't suck."

I'm trying to make perfect moments. And those generate meaning. If you go deep enough in how to ...
IRA GLASS

In general in New York, we all eat like kings. Insane quality, mind-blowing variety, at all price ra...
IRA GLASS

Starting in the 1970s, American cars started to lose market share to foreign cars. It was clear what...
IRA GLASS

I'll meet listeners who tell me what a great voice I have. But I don't have a great voice fo...
IRA GLASS

If you want somebody to tell you a story, one of the most easiest and effective ways is if you'r...
IRA GLASS

I feel like dance, by its nature, goes so easily to grand and beautiful.
IRA GLASS

I don't own a radio. I listen to everything through apps or on my iPhone. And then I download th...
IRA GLASS

People are generally forced to change. We don't want to change, and then something absolutely fo...
IRA GLASS

I think people who live in New York don't realize just how much time they spend talking about th...
IRA GLASS

Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I'...
IRA GLASS

I'm a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who ...
IRA GLASS

I am such a do-goody, people-pleasing kid - or I was - I don't think I've ever been fired, n...
IRA GLASS

In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.
IRA GLASS

The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that ge...
IRA GLASS

It's rare for me to read any fiction. I almost only read nonfiction. I don't believe in guil...
IRA GLASS

I like excess. And giant M&M's.
IRA GLASS

Harry Potter to me is a bore. His talent arrives as a gift; he's chosen. Who can identify with t...
IRA GLASS

There is a feeling, when you listen to radio, that it's one person, and they're talking to y...
IRA GLASS

In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence.
IRA GLASS

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, ...
IRA GLASS

The pledge drive has everything going against it as broadcasting. It's repetitive. It's ad-l...
IRA GLASS

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fu...
IRA GLASS

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

It's tricky, performing the show live. Because when you're in a big auditorium, in front of ...
IRA GLASS

I remember that in Baltimore, where I grew up, we would drive by the radio station and tower of WBAL...
IRA GLASS

Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporti...
IRA GLASS

I think stories get better the more people try to amuse themselves.
IRA GLASS

I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are bette...
IRA GLASS

'Smallville' is like a Domino's pizza. While you're eating, you're thinking, ...
IRA GLASS

I liked the people at Brown, while I really disliked most of the fellow students I had met at Northw...
IRA GLASS

Semiotics is really interested in the questions like, what keeps you watching something, what keeps ...
IRA GLASS

Radio is more powerful the closer we mimic the way we actually speak to each other. That's why H...
IRA GLASS

Great stories happen to those who can tell them
IRA GLASS

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative wor...
IRA GLASS

I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of int...
IRA GLASS

I'm not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I'm a natural interviewer, a natural list...
IRA GLASS

I don't go looking for stories with the idea of wrongness in my head, no. But the fact is, a lot...
IRA GLASS

I just have a harder time, I think, feeling close to people without self consciousness.
IRA GLASS

One of the things I learned as a young semiotics nerd was that if you have plot moving forward, no m...
IRA GLASS

When you're working in public radio, you don't have any money to advertise.
IRA GLASS

One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind my...
IRA GLASS

But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're be...
IRA GLASS

I'm in production year round. I work long hours. I have a dog and a wife. There's not a lot ...
IRA GLASS

I don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.
IRA GLASS

It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature,...
IRA GLASS

For most people when you say - public radio - they automatically think it's like medicine. We only d...
IRA GLASS

Hearing it in her words, it makes it all the more real. It's something that's hard to get across in ...
IRA GLASS

Her vision of what the country is, and what she should be writing about, is totally her own. She's u...
IRA GLASS

Any journalist who doesn't stick to the day's news is sort of part journalist, part anthropologist. ...
IRA GLASS

Often they don't take advantage of the latitude they have. They spend a lot of their early career tr...
IRA GLASS

Just when did I get to the point when staying at a hotel wasn't fun?
IRA GLASS

I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional ...
IRA GLASS

The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side.
IRA GLASS

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write ab...
JULIA GLASS

That's why you can't be a true Yankee without winter: because all the best pleasures are ear...
JULIA GLASS

From fifth grade on, I worked at our public library. The pay, a pittance, was almost superfluous. Al...
JULIA GLASS

Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books.
JULIA GLASS

A fine memoir is to a fine novel as a well-wrought blanket is to a fancifully embroidered patchwork ...
JULIA GLASS

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.
GEORGE GLASS

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.
CARTER GLASS

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustro...
JULIA GLASS

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always...
JULIA GLASS

Alan had loved her breakfast pastries best; Charlie craved her pies. He liked them true-blue America...
JULIA GLASS

People were dumped all the time and their tears did not swallow dry land.
VALENTINE GLASS

At this point, moving it doesn't make sense.
ALEX GLASS

This is a 'fool me once' kind of situation. We're not going to be fooled again.
ALEX GLASS

The outlook right now is unfortunately that we're facing incredibly tight budget times and the feder...
ALEX GLASS

It's so lame. They know they're going to lose so they know better than (to) offer anything good.
ALEX GLASS

The Farm Bill provides the resources for farmers and rural communities, and has a major effect on Wa...
ALEX GLASS

Sen. Murray is incredibly concerned about the impact of these cuts on students and affordability.
ALEX GLASS

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters&...
JULIA GLASS

I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always...
JULIA GLASS

At its best, fiction cultivates fantasy and compassion; at its worst, memoir provokes schadenfreude ...
JULIA GLASS

Colorful garments - ball gowns, kimonos, evening pajamas - made from yards upon yards of iridescent ...
JULIA GLASS

If I'm lucky enough to see the day when my sons are living independently, maybe with families of...
JULIA GLASS

I was ridiculed in public school for being smart. A teacher's pet.
JULIA GLASS

In retrospect, I didn’t really want to be a slut. What I wanted and needed was a therapist who wou...
VALENTINE GLASS

He wants to use my body, to take advantage, and I want to let him. I want to be someone’s one nigh...
VALENTINE GLASS

Is there any reason why the American people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any mor...
CARTER GLASS

We can’t jump off bridges anymore because our iPhones will get ruined. We can’t take skinny dips...
JEREMY GLASS

It's changing faster than you can blink. You would be surprised at how many people live above the st...
BRIAN GLASS

She was awesome. She had location on all of her pitches and was just outstanding.
BRIAN GLASS

Mary Ann was just outstanding running the bases. Sometimes, I don't think she really understands jus...
BRIAN GLASS

That last inning was incredible.
BRIAN GLASS

This is truly an historic occasion.
BRENT GLASS

There was no 'golden age' of rebuilding. They had the same controversies then that we have now.
BRENT GLASS

There wasn't a golden age when we weren't thrashing them out.
BRENT GLASS

Hip hop has reached well beyond its urban roots to diverse national dimensions and has been an integ...
BRENT GLASS

The survival of this flag for nearly 200 years is a visible testimony to the strength and perseveran...
BRENT GLASS

In my fairly disorganized life, yellow stickies are too easily lost, and as for software, I try to a...
JULIA GLASS

Winter sports aren't my thing. You can have your boards and blades and your glacier-gripping cle...
JULIA GLASS

Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or wor...
PHILIP GLASS

This plan [to disenfranchise felons] will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State i...
CARTER GLASS

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money
CARTER GLASS

I have struggled for decades now with the fear of and resistance to change - mostly in the realms of...
JULIA GLASS

I love to eat, I love to feed people, and I'm a great cook. I joked with my friends that I wante...
JULIA GLASS

The mole-rat raps too. It's kind of scary.
SARAH GLASS

All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of th...
JULIA GLASS

Visual art is a foreign language I'm fluent at, but my native language is language.
JULIA GLASS

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cr...
JULIA GLASS

I've learned from doing both that we tend to get more benefit from a low-key approach. You run the r...
WILLIAM GLASS

There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writ...
JULIA GLASS

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a land...
JULIA GLASS

She hit the ball well. Jennifer Hecht served well to keep her in the front row to get all those kill...
LAURIE GLASS

My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that ...
JULIA GLASS

Out of 10 bouquets, we sell about nine red.
LORI GLASS

It's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it, ... We dodged a bullet with Hurricane George, b...
JOHN GLASS

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten ho...
JULIA GLASS

I don't know if a deal is going to get done. I'm not optimistic at this point.
KEITH GLASS

Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother ...
JULIA GLASS

I'm a fictional monogamist - I can only work on one thing at a time - but each novel starts grow...
JULIA GLASS

My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' ...
JULIA GLASS

If something's that exciting, we should go towards that epicenter rather than sue it.
DANIEL GLASS

I was pleasantly surprised, and I could tell that they are genuine about wanting us in the coalition...
DAVID GLASS

This plan [to disenfranchise felons] will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State i...
CARTER GLASS

I think it's great. You hear of skis being stolen. I just have my name on a sticker, but if you see ...
JOHN GLASS

This plan [to disenfranchise felons] will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State i...
CARTER GLASS

I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed wi...
PHILIP GLASS

This is a loop. All he's saying on this record, the vocalist, is, 'Are you there, are you there,' wh...
DANIEL GLASS

He couldn't let go of their anguish.
CHARLES GLASS

My dreams of another perfect season went up in smoke yesterday. I still take comfort that we have 16...
DAVID GLASS

It was Friday, so the farmers' market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and...
JULIA GLASS

Each of our operating divisions reported increased operating income as a percent of sales and surpas...
DAVID GLASS

We're really excited about growth internationally,
DAVID GLASS

from a convenience ? and cost standpoint will be very important.
DAVID GLASS

I hope that he's happy here and will stay because we've laid the foundation now to do a lot of good ...
DAVID GLASS

They shocked us, we never expected them to throw this much. We anticipated them running the ball. We...
DAVID GLASS

It's one thing after another to get the pieces in place. We will hit challenges, and we will work th...
DAVID GLASS

Deric, let's get this guy signed and playing somewhere.
DAVID GLASS

In the off-season I picked up a slider. That gave me an out pitch. When I get to 0-2, now I can bury...
BUDDY GLASS

Yes, [Basin Street was] first, and maybe they will be the largest. As far as concerns about what som...
DAVID GLASS

Maybe the game would not have been so close if we would have held onto that interception. This type ...
KELLY GLASS

As state of the art as the Truman Sports Complex was, it's going to be even better. We'll have a jew...
DAN GLASS

We've made our share of mistakes and we've tried hard to correct them, but we've never covered them ...
DAVID GLASS

I think mistakes are made when we don't embrace technology centers, like Napster wasn't embraced. I ...
DANIEL GLASS

The partnership between Missouri State University and IBM creates tremendous opportunities for both ...
DAVID GLASS

As a result Oracle discovered both the Independent Institute and the National Taxpayer's Union were ...
JENNIFER GLASS

Why was a member or leader of the kidnap group actually arrested by the Pakistanis, and why wasn't h...
CHARLES GLASS

I don't know what Peter's epitaph would be, I never asked him what he would like it to be. But certa...
CHARLES GLASS

He never, ever let us down,
CHARLES GLASS

More than that, the thought rattled uncomfortably in my child brain that I would one day become one ...
VALENTINE GLASS

Finally, in my early 30s, I started writing fiction for the first time as an adult. That felt so sca...
JULIA GLASS

The best booksellers are like trustworthy pushers: Whatever they're dealing, you take it.
JULIA GLASS

Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.
JULIA GLASS

Off-speed stuff was working really well. After we got the two five-spots I was able to find the zone...
BUDDY GLASS

It's three completely different looks. Moody comes from the left side, works both sides of the plate...
BUDDY GLASS

It takes more than professional status in a field to make a teacher.
FRED GLASS

European musicians didn't learn popular music, whereas in America we did, ... So you played in bands...
PHILIP GLASS

I am pleased to report another record quarter of sales and earnings,
DAVID GLASS

We achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of net income in excess of $1 billion and the highest net...
DAVID GLASS

I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a c...
PHILIP GLASS

Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation.
JULIA GLASS

It definitely says we are going in that direction. If you trace it back to the last labor deal, you ...
DAN GLASS

The roof would be a help but not a requirement.
DAN GLASS

Chemotherapy can be a long, tough haul - for me, it went on for six months - and the best doctors an...
JULIA GLASS

Readers tell me that my novels are filled with significant mothers. Do I realize this? Do I do it on...
JULIA GLASS

Just like Kings Island has to have a new ride every year or so, we need to have a new thing.
FRED GLASS

The commissioner indicated he would take that into account to the extent he had an impact (on negoti...
FRED GLASS

Chances are that if (math and science graduates) aren't already considering teaching they'll still t...
FRED GLASS

Given the inflexibility of the board and its perfunctory dismissal of a reasonable acquisition propo...
GLASS LEWIS

The Disney board has been notoriously insular, famously gullible and blindly loyal to Mr. Eisner.
GLASS LEWIS

Elliott has not recommended a specific alternative strategy for shareholders to consider. We do not ...
GLASS LEWIS

[In recommending a vote FOR the B. Riley & Co., Inc. Nominees on the GOLD proxy card, Glass Lewis no...
GLASS LEWIS

[In recommending a vote FOR the B. Riley & Co., Inc. Nominees onthe GOLD proxy card, Glass Lewis not...
GLASS LEWIS

We believe the Company has demonstrated its ability to create real value for shareholders, particula...
GLASS LEWIS

Americans refused to see accidents as accidental. They did not comprehend they while tragedy always ...
JULIA GLASS

I guess that’s how well you know me. You think I like hearing this news.”
“I’m sorry. T...
JULIA GLASS

Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic.
JULIA GLASS

Certainly the petition is one way to get the public involved. I'm not sure what the ultimate goal of...
LARRY GLASS

I think it came out of the frustration of the City Council meeting that we all attended, particularl...
LARRY GLASS

We want to see something that's going to be a win-win for everybody and not just for one segment of ...
LARRY GLASS

So far we've gotten just a few contributions here and there.
LARRY GLASS

I know what's gone into that award.
LAURIE GLASS

I wouldn't say that we were on top of our game, which gives us room for improvement and things to wo...
LAURIE GLASS

We have one goal in mind. Everybody we meet is standing in the way of that goal. We can't be thinkin...
LAURIE GLASS

That sound is intimidating. When you're digging and you hear that 'Pop,' you gear up for the full fo...
LAURIE GLASS

I had no clue what to expect. But a car going 50 mph can do a lot of damage. And there are kids gett...
LAURIE GLASS

It was a really good day for all of us. It was a good, consistent day all around.
LAURIE GLASS

That's a heck of a recruiting class, I would say. I'm excited about it.
LAURIE GLASS

They just jumped out on us and we didn't have enough in the tank to fight back. But to go 3-2 agains...
LAURIE GLASS

It was a real good day all-around, but especially on defense. In particular the blocking schemes tha...
LAURIE GLASS

I confirm that she's split with him.
LORI GLASS

The growers have sacrificed smell for longevity.
LORI GLASS

She pulls from a shelf certain rare spices and sugars that her successor is unlikely to use. Insulat...
JULIA GLASS

She hadn't bothered to go to bed, since Tuesday was one of the days on which she rose before dawn to...
JULIA GLASS

They agreed on four flavors of cake- vanilla, maple, orange, and coconut- to alternate, almost rando...
JULIA GLASS

But people, as Alan had once reflected to Greenie, were not at all like recipes. You could have all ...
JULIA GLASS

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.
CARTER GLASS

If you don't know what to do, there's actually a chance of doing something new.
PHILIP GLASS

Greenie had brought together ingredients for cherry bread. It was a variation on Irish soda bread, b...
JULIA GLASS

Right now, he's planning to be back . He's in good spirits and feeling fine.
JOE GLASS

We're very comfortable the way we are sitting right now. It's been a disastrous season, as everybody...
JOE GLASS

Larry will dictate his own time when he comes back to coach, whether he comes back or Wednesday or i...
JOE GLASS

Absolutely not. I don't believe there's any pressure or any onus or anything like that at all.
JOE GLASS

He's been cleared to coach, but he's going to go by his own feelings. He's not coaching in Detroit, ...
JOE GLASS

It's not even a point of discussion. I don't believe this is anything that could involve any decisio...
JOE GLASS

We never said anything different than that.
JOE GLASS

Nothing has changed today. I talk to him at least two times every day.
JOE GLASS

I've read the poker books, but at this point, everybody who's playing has read the poker books. I feel like I'm knowledgeable enough to understand what's going on in the game, and I understand why I suck. And I'm not sure if I'll ever rise beyond that to the level where I don't suck.

Ira Glass

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