Michael Ian Black Quotes

Ask others about themselves, at the same time, be on guard not to talk too much about yourself.

I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me.

[John F.] Kennedy was a great listener. As he listened his eyes got larger, and he looked at you, and you knew you had been looked at and listened to.

I was always more interested in asking people about themselves than I was telling them about me.

I don't like to write about myself. I like listening to people.

One can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

You want to be interesting? Be interested.

You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them.

Ultimately, the best speakers are the ones who have put 10,000 hours into listening.

Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

My interviews are very pointed. I'm an active participant; I will kindly interrupt people. But I've learned there is nothing people won't tell you if you ask in a compassionate and legitimately interested way.

Someone once told me that if you respect a person, listen to their opinion. And if you do not respect someone, then do not listen to their opinion. And that works both ways.

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?

You make more friends by becoming interested in other people than by trying to interest other people in yourself.

I spent over 90 percent of my time talking to people who didn’t have to listen to me.

Great reporters get people to talk to them. Master reporters get people to want to talk to them.

Understanding the other person's viewpoint is the beginning of polical wisdom,

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

I always had an ability to listen and give people the space to open up and express themselves, and I was hoping it would translate on TV.

Mirroring is simply repeating what someone just said. It creates more reception from the other side, it focuses attention, and it gives them an opportunity to dial in more with you and you to dial in more with them. It causes an almost completely unconscious response for the person to want to go on.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is just to sit down and listen to another person's experience and listen how they express themselves and want to be seen by others.

People that don't talk are constipated. I'm sorry, but if you can't communicate, what do you have? You have nothing.

In general, being likeable is more about being interested - rather than interesting. Indeed, a good way to convince someone that you are an awesome conversationalist is to simply shut up and let the other person talk.