Terry Gross famous quotes

06-16-2025

Rapists who might've been convicted were free to assault other women.
-- Terry Gross

#Might #Assault
A lot of the things that we think of as being racial differences are really class differences in America.
-- Terry Gross

#Thinking #America #Class
An interesting difference between African-American humor and Jewish humor, in it's kind of basic or maybe most austere type form is, African-American humor, some of it comes out of playing the dozens in which you insult the other person or insult the other person's mother, and so much of Jewish humor is like, you're insulting yourself. It's totally self-deprecating.
-- Terry Gross

#Mother #Self #Differences
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

#Kids #Thinking #Self
That era in the late '80s through the '90s was really when the music was so new, fresh, energetic, but still creative. It hadn't quite gotten corporatized yet.
-- Terry Gross

#Creative #Eras #Energetic
I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.
-- Terry Gross

#Growing Up #Kids #Names
My parents were pretty open about a lot of things, especially my mom. And any kind of little crazy thing I was into, she was very supportive of. You know, whether it was BMX bike racing or being in the Boy Scouts or surfing or anything else, she always seemed to sort of support it. And I think it's because she was an immigrant and that idea of sort of having her kids be able to have access to their dreams and whatever they wanted to follow was very important to her.
-- Terry Gross

#Mom #Dream #Crazy
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

#Art #Thinking #Careers
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

#Thinking #Ideas #Issues
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

#Memories #Self #Knowing
I love the edited version of it.
-- Terry Gross
I work in a medium where I get to be totally invisible and I get great pleasure from that, being a pretty self-conscious person.
-- Terry Gross

#Self #Invisible #Pleasure
I love songs. Songs are my favorite things.
-- Terry Gross

#Song #Favorites Things #My Favorite
I don't want to help a politician revise the truth.
-- Terry Gross

#Want #Helping #Politician
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

#Confused #Thinking #Asking Questions
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 #Asking #Lines
I respect someone's right to privacy and I want them to know it.
-- Terry Gross

#Want #Privacy #Right To Privacy
It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood.
-- Terry Gross

#Misunderstood #Sometimes #Being Misunderstood
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

#Meaningful #People #Pay
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

#Lying #Character #Over You
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

#Thinking #Essence #Ideas
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.
-- Terry Gross

#Thinking #League #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

#Thinking #Voice #Personality
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

#Reality #Risk #Needs
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 #People #Trying
Work can take on a new dimension if you know something about the artist.
-- Terry Gross

#Artist #Dimensions
What puts someone on guard isn't necessarily the fear of being found out.
-- Terry Gross

#Found
Often real life is boring and problematic. I love the edited version of it.
-- Terry Gross

#Real #Real Life #Life Is
I'm not the betting kind.
-- Terry Gross

#Kind #Betting
Many artists use their own lives as a kind of case study to examine what it's like to be human.
-- Terry Gross

#Artist #Use #Kind

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