Interview Techniques Quotes

What's an ambush interview? You walk up to a fellow who you want to talk to, and he hasn't been - he hadn't been willing to talk to you before. You've sent him letters, and you've tried to talk to him on the phone. So you walk up to him on the street and ask him a question - that's an ambush?

I'm not saying Michael Moore's smarter than Sean Hannity, but Michael Moore is better at running interviews than Hannity, even though Hannity's running the interview!

Talking to the press, you say things a little differently.

I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.

I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.

Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.

Sometimes you just wonder whether people just don't have the sensitivity or decency. I'm a member of the media myself: I host a talk show. I know sometimes when you want to ask something, you can circumvent it with words and vocabulary. You don't suddenly just go out there and ask something directly in the pretense of being absolutely candid.

The first year I was on the show, it took an interviewer about 45 minutes to get it out of me that I even had a dog, and even then I wouldn't tell him the dog's name.

I get diminishing returns when I bore myself in an interview.

I don't think I'm better than everyone else at anything, but I am very quick at organizing a big mass of interview tape into a structure.

When I began to interview people from the '60s, my first question was always, 'What was your favorite record?'

My novels are never directly based on a true crime incident, but I want to get the details right. I want to know how homicide detectives think, what a SWAT team might do to prepare.

I thought that the behavioral and some of the profiling stuff was interesting. The thing that I was most interested in, and the thing that we were really adament about, was let's get these guys who were there on tape, or in some kind of way, telling what happened. No one has really talked to them all.

My first-ever radio interview was with Annie Mac on Radio 1!

I take pride in how I interview people. One of the things people come to our show for most is the interaction I have with the artists; it feels very peer-to-peer.

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.

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it's really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it's nothing to do with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.

Speaking to the subject is the most overrated thing in journalism.

I always spend time exploring the customs and attitudes of the countries I'm using for locations, and interviewing the people who live there. I've visited over 90 countries thus far.

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

Ace of Spades says that this became clear to him in a revelation one night. He was watching Chris Matthews interview [Barack] Obama, and he didn't get one question! He didn't ask Obama one question about how Obamacare works. Every question was one degree or another: How do you feel about [John] Boehner opposing it? How do you feel about it? What will make you happy? Do you think you can get it? [It] was irrelevant!

In terms of, like, interviews, I used to struggle a lot with interviews; I never knew what to say.

Most interviewers are looking for a headline. They're not skilled. They're looking for shock value.

I'm the best interviewer in the whole format. Except for Howard Stern, I'd put myself against anybody. Because I ask human questions.

I'm frightened of interviews.