Gwen Ifill Quotes

I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.

My basic approach to interviewing is to ask the basic questions that might even sound naive, or not intellectual. Sometimes when you ask the simple questions like 'Who are you?' or 'What do you do?' you learn the most.

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

I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.

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

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

I always do my interviews face to face.

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

As an FBI agent, you don't want to go in there gangbusters and confrontational. You are going to get a lot more information if you put the subject at ease and allow them to talk.

If you interrupt somebody too early, if you miss it and don't interrupt at all - that's the difference between a good interview and a bad interview. It's about the absolute moment.

I never do formal interviews. I don't use a tape recorder. I take notes but occasionally.

I like to think that I differ from other interviewers in the sense that I hide my agenda more successfully, and I'm more open to hearing stuff that is surprising and unexpected. That I'm actually involved in an investigation, through monologue, at times.

Donald Trump has come on a lot and I think one of the hardest parts of my job is digging down beyond their talking points to get them to say something that people actually want to hear rather than what they've come to the interview with, and that is difficult. That's a reporter's challenge.

Don't sit and wait - For the world on a plate - (It's not a stroke of luck or chance) - Just draw a bead on that sucker, and drive!

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

Their forward got a lucky squeeze from the defender.

Either you set your goals and, in doing so, have your life governed by choice or you do nothing and have your life governed by chance.

When I sit down to interview people, I don't hold questions and I don't know the answers. They're more like conversations that become lessons.

People around me never say anything. They just seem to want to hear what I have to say. That's why I do all the talking.

She nodded, jotting something in her notebook. You’re writing that down? Has the interview started?” Lee, whenever you’re talking to a reporter, you’re being interviewed.

Don't say yes until I finish talking.

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

Instead of talking in the hope that people will listen, try listening in the hope that people will talk.

People don't listen, they just wait for their turn to talk.

Very few great goals actually go in.