“Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction ne...” — Ira Glass Quote

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

“There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon.”

“I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that experience, actually.”

“Musical theater tends to be word-driven, whereas opera gives you so much more scope for driving the story with the music.”

“From a very early age, I was in tune with pop radio, and most of this listening was done driving. We had an old '67 or '65 Buick LeSabre, and whenever we would drive around, I would actually stick my head right against the speakers in the back and sing along to the music.”

“I've been driving since I was 19 years old.”