Ariel Helwani Quotes

With the long-format interview, I can get into really interesting conversations with my guests. You know what it's like to get the opportunity to speak to really interesting people and pick their brain about things. To have time to let a guest actually speak and tell a story and get into detail is really exciting.

I like the ability to engage intellectually with someone. I get so bored so quickly, so if you can't keep me interested, then I'm out.

When interviews are good, the conversation can be amazing. Sometimes I've had conversations with journalists that I've never had with anybody else.

One day I got to meet him because he was teaching Broadway dance. It was a little after Tap came out and he was very young. He wouldn't remember me, but it was quite amazing. And now I've met him as an adult!

I hate when people say, "Have fun at the press preview." Fun is talking to you.

I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up.

We were very different, and we disagreed about a lot of things, but he was always so interesting, you know?

One of the strengths of my interviews is that I really, honest to God, have no idea what people are going to say.

I love Dylan. I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish on MacDougal Street. That was before I went to England. I think both of us were pretty drunk at the time, so he probably doesn’t remember it.

Tis beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just IT. Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.

I've been able to read people my entire life, because I've interviewed people now for 20-some-odd years. So you can read people that way.

You're new here, aren't you?" Rolan asked. "Rose is visiting. She's a friend of the family." Viktoria said. "Ah," he said. "Now I remember hearing about you. I had no idea such a fierce Strigoi killer would be so beautiful." "It's part of the job description," I said dryly.

I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject, the interviewee - actually tend to hold steady much more consistently in rural Africa than they do in the American inner city.

I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.

Reporters tend to launch on what seems to be the clearest, most stark aspects of someone's life in terms of an interview.

This uses a lens system, which I have used for years in various different ways, but I've never used it in the context of an interview. This is the very first time that I've done that. It's a lens called The Revolution, so it allowed me to interview Elsa [Dorfman] and actually operate the camera. Well one of the cameras, because there were four cameras there.

A lot of lines in movies were written, but I'm always improvising. Once you get into the scene, it just comes to me.

Malcolm X had a habit of scribbling notes in small pieces of paper that [Alex] Haley would surreptitiously pick up at the end of their discussions.

Mike Wallace's interviews may make great television, but they don't produce great evidence.

I was spurred by the fact that having worked for women's magazines myself as a journalist, if you go off and interview a female celebrity, I'd just go in and interview them like I'd interview any human being and talk about the things that interested me. And you'd come back, and you'd file your copy. And then my editor would read through my copy and go, why haven't you asked them if they want kids? And I'd be like, well, I don't know, I interviewed Aerosmith last week. And I didn't ask them that.

So when I cover the president, I try to remember two things: First, if you don't ask, you don't find out; and second, the questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.

I always want to be able to be in a room where I know I'm going to be entertained and challenged.