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"I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot."
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Exlpore more Fiction quotes
"Villainessa Tittel was a hired killer, an assassin by trade. She had enjoyed the best education and had been trained by assassins who had (until then at least) been considered the best in the business. She had turned to 'cleaning' as an occupation because she really enjoyed endings more than beginnings " and anyway, she didn't need to know her mark's entire pedigree or life's story, or to have some kind of facetious moral justification just to collect her fee. Unsurprisingly, when she did read " on those rare occasions " her books were always dog-eared from the back."
"I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying."
"But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel...it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended."
"In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds."
"For some, vampires are still firmly in the 'evil, scary' column. However, in recent decades, vampires also run the gamut from evil to morally ambiguous all the way to fangless and vegetarian. I think part of their appeal lies in their versatility. Vampires can be the villain, the hero, and everything in between, all depending on the writer's whim. You'll also never hear me say that anyone is doing vampires 'wrong' because unless a real vampire stands up and sets the record straight, it's anyone's game as a far as defining them in fiction."
Explore more quotes by Ira Glass
"In 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."
"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."
"We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews."
"But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time."
"Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question."
"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."
"But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake."
"You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space."
"It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud."
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