Booker T Quotes

I really enjoy working as a pundit.

I love to consume information of all kinds, and I think that also hopefully helps with my broadcasting, that I always try to bring up a fact that maybe will connect to a person who's not a big fan, or maybe a pop culture reference.

It's actually harder than it looks to be a good pundit on the air. You've got to have stuff to say.

I don't think I have the face - may have the voice but not the demeanor for an anchor. And I defied it.

I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, 'Kid, don't make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you're like David Frost. Make it a conversation.'

I don't think I'd be a very good talk show host. I mean, I'm very talkative but I don't know if I could do that all the time.

I was a standup comic, which doesn't necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn't talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I'll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.

When somebody asks me what I do, I don't think I'd say critic. I say writer.

I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

What I will learn over the years will be of benefit and interest to me personally but, as far as the program is concerned, I'm the mouthpiece of the viewers as well.

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'

If you want people to listen, you have to have a platform to speak from, and that is excellence in what you do.

I'm psyched-up when I do radio. I can reach hundreds of thousands of people in a market. And way psyched-up when I'm on television. For people not to take it seriously is foolish.

Someday I would really love to do a talk show. That's something I've always been interested in. I like to talk, and I love to help people.

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.

I love doing talk shows.

It's weird: you do a TED talk on something, and people think that you suddenly have a lot of answers around the topic.

Chauncy Burr ... talks well, possibly better than he thinks. But this is a common failing.

Whenever I'm broadcasting, I like it. When I'm broadcasting I can't wait to hear what I say.

The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across.

Being on TV in front of people is a lot different than sitting in a dark room with a microphone. When I had my radio show, I was on four hours a day for 20-something years. If you put a live microphone in front of Mother Teresa for that amount of time, she'd piss somebody off.

When you put yourself out there as an expert and the people you are trying to attract are people who want to do the very show you are doing, guys standing around, sitting around arguing with each other over sports, if you make a mistake that lights up like a flare in the middle of the night. You've just got to correct that or else they're going to say, 'Well, why do these dopes have that show? I can go out there and be just as good as them.'

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

I think the most important thing really was that you could take very personal ideas and present them to an audience in entertaining ways.