Terry Gross Thinking Quotations

I've always been really curious about things and slightly confused by the world, and I think someone who feels that way is in a good position to be the one asking questions.

If you are interested in ideas, radio is way more pure than television. You're not distracted by somebody's nose or hair or posture. You can really see how someone thinks and penetrate to the essence of who that person is.

I think the interview form works best on the radio. There are a lot of personality traits conveyed in a person's voice, the rhythm of their speech or how confident they sound.

I've never seen radio as the minor leagues, where I'm just really preparing to be in the show that really counts, namely, television, which is, I think, what people often assume. I've never felt that way.

Sometimes when I'm on the internet, I'll get this, like, which of these ad experiences would you prefer? And I'll have a choice of, like, a car, a pharmaceutical item or, you know, clothing. And I'm thinking, like, I don't want any of these. Do I have to choose?

It seems that's where Bill Clinton came in last night because he told this long story about how they met [with Hillary Clinton], how he courted her, how he bought a house to convince her, I think after the third proposal, to actually marry him. And he talked about her activism and her commitment and everything. And it was as if he could tell the narrative in a way that she couldn't.

I don't think my father noticed that he had daughters. I think, you know, part of the damage of the childhood was, I simply don't think they were acknowledged as human beings at all. Or - you know, one of the reasons I became a cook later on in my life was, I was not allowed to cook an egg.

A lot of the things that we think of as being racial differences are really class differences in America.

I think in particularly with young kids who don't have a lot of positive influences, pop culture almost becomes a larger part of that self-discovery and how you define yourself.

I think there's always an expectation when you're a first generation, especially a first-generation Nigerian, of sort of being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. And so, you know, sort of my initial pursuits into the arts and that I was going to pursue film as a career didn't confuse them, but it was definitely something that they were scared about.

I was thinking about comedy and how comedy in many ways opens us up to ideas and really being influenced by Richard Pryor and sort of the way he would use comedy to really speak about larger social issues.