Macaulay Culkin Quotes

What I prefer is an audience who listen. And are intelligent. Which I try and assume every audience is. And that if something goes wrong, it's generally my fault and not theirs.

Good listeners have a huge advantage. For one, when they engage in conversation, they make people 'feel' heard. They 'feel' that someone really understands their wants, needs and desires. And for good reason; a good listener does care to understand.

Improv relies just as much on listening as it does you delivering dialogue. That's the hard for some people. Some people just concentrate on what they're going to say, and they're not listening. You have to listen in order to see where the other person is going to.

I actually think of myself as quite a shy person, although I know I give the impression of someone much more confident. I think what I do have is a capacity to listen to the other, even if the other is an opponent. That leads, in all senses of the word, to an engagement.

My advice to all interviewers is: Shut up and listen. It's harder than it sounds.

There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.

I've been a schoolteacher. I always try to get the kids to finish talking before the next one starts.

To do a really good interview, you have to be truly interested in the person.

I think you've got be willing as an interviewer to ask the dumb question every now and then.

Too many leaders are so caught up in the momentum of work that they lose sight of the opportunity to connect with people. I discovered that the more fully present I was with other people, the more fully present they were with me, and the more productive our relationship became over time.

Whomever you're going to interview, you have to be interested in what it is you want to know from them. You have to be interested in the subject.

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.

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

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

Try to be as good a listener as you are a speaker. Don't just put the emphasis on saying things. Listen.

I can be a good listener. I can ask the right questions a lot of the time.

Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people's general normal self-preservation mode.

This is the first lesson for writers - or anyone - who conducts interviews: If you want someone to talk, you've got to know how to listen. And good listening is a surprisingly active process. The interviewee is your focus of attention; you are there to hear what he says and thinks, exclusively.

[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 try to ask a question rather than give a speech.

I have listened to tapes of myself interviewing people and mostly I try to be better at directing the conversation.

'Snoops,' that was the worst.

I think one of the things about listening is that it's always at its most powerful when it's present, when it's right here, when it's right now. And that's a lesson about improv that I think just made me a much more social person.

I once interviewed Anthony Burgess on the radio. I played pop records between the conversation.