“

For me, pushing myself is way more about ‘It’s hard to make something that’s interesting.’ It’s really, really hard, and I’m sure we don’t succeed with every story on every show. Basically, anything that anyone makes…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. It’s all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. Everything wants to be mediocre, so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will. Anyone who makes something for a living, or even not for a living, if they’re really excited about it…You just have to exert so much will into something for it to be good. That feels exactly the same now as it did the first week of the show. That hasn’t changed at all. That’s the premise of what it takes to make something.

-

Ira Glass

The flipside of his “Nobody tells people who are beginners” statement

(Source: thefourthmachine)

“

Ira Glass smells like tote bags.

- Mike Birbiglia

(Source: braindeadmegaphone)

“

What’s it like to be in a love triangle between another woman and a cat?

- Ira Glass

(via naominight)

“

[on the Johns] How sad for them that they’re actually in the band. And so for them to hear that sound they actually have to make it themselves.

-

Ira Glass

ira you precious baby, you say the weirdest things that are actually sorta deep

(via sluteatingtree)

“

Glass is a writer’s writer, or more aptly a writer’s radio host. He understands how narrative works, how to build tension, how to place words within sentences and sentences within paragraphs, how at the end of a story a character must be transformed. Every good writer knows that the most important, most evocative information should come at the end of a sentence or paragraph, and even in conversation he does this. Take his earlier words, for example: “They’ve chosen, as their medium, food. I love that.” He doesn’t say: “I love that they’ve chosen food as their medium.” Because he knows — probably instinctively — that what comes last will carry the most weight; he knows where inside a sentence the power lies — or rather where inside a sentence lies the power. And so even in his speech you hear the pregnant pauses, the places where, if he were writing the conversation, he would use colons, semicolons and dashes.

- Rachel Louise Snyder on Ira Glass from her 1995 Salon profile on the host of This American Life.

(Source: jarrettfuller)

“

A warning to listeners: there’s nothing explicit, but this story does acknowledge the existence of sex… As does this warning.

- Ira Glass

(Source: ifitgivesyoujoy)

“

Great stories happen to people who can tell them.

- Ira Glass (via jennjulian)