When you're reading a newspaper and you're seeing ads on the page, it's not kind of invasive. Like, it's on the page next to the article. You can look at it or not. You can turn the page when you're ready. On the internet, the ads - many of the ads - just are so controlling. They insist that you see them.

Terry Gross

Categorized in : Looks Reading Pages

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.

Terry Gross

essence hair thinking

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.

Terry Gross

asking-questions confused thinking

I am literally smaller than life. I am an unextraordinary-looking person. I've seen people trying to hide their disappointment when they meet me, and I have to watch them get over it.

Terry Gross

disappointment trying people

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.

Terry Gross

doctors art thinking

Most people I know that have work that is very meaningful to them pay the price of having to work all the time.

Terry Gross

pay-the-price meaningful people

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.

Terry Gross

voice personality thinking

My father modestly referred to himself as the Great Santini when we were growing up. And he took it - I later learned he had seen a high-wire aerialist when he was a boy, and he was up doing acrobatics in his airplane, and when he came down one time - when was a young lieutenant - he said, I was better than the Great Santini today. And some of the other pilots heard it, and the nickname stuck.

Terry Gross

airplane growing-up father

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.

Terry Gross

issues ideas thinking

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.

Terry Gross

self kids thinking

The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person, but the person whom you are about to discover. You know, like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you're realizing how great they are.

Terry Gross

over-you character lying

Often real life is boring and problematic. I love the edited version of it.

Terry Gross

boring real life-is

Hillary [Clinton] has been very guarded with the press.

Terry Gross

guarded has-beens clinton

I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory.

Terry Gross

knowing self memories

Anyone who agrees to be interviewed must decide where to draw the line between what is public and what is private. But the line can shift, depending on who is asking the questions. What puts someone on guard isn't necessarily the fear of being 'found out.' It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood.

Terry Gross

misunderstood lines asking

I know that everyone who listens to radio creates you in a visual image that they need you to have. Whatever that is, I thought, let them have it. Let me be who the listener needs me to be and let me not contradict that with the reality of my photograph and risk disappointing them.

Terry Gross

risk reality needs

Donald Trump's hair frankly. Sometimes you know you're going to get criticism, but you just have to take .

Terry Gross

criticism hair sometimes

I love songs. Songs are my favorite things.

Terry Gross

favorites-things my-favorite song

It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood.

Terry Gross

being-misunderstood misunderstood sometimes

I love the edited version of it.

Terry Gross

edited versions

The [Bernie] Sanders campaign said you might be suppressing the vote by doing this 'cause people in those states might decide to stay home, that their vote doesn't count.

Terry Gross

campaigns home people