Interviewing Techniques Quotes

All of our family holidays were always work trips for my parents, so my sister and I would sit somewhere or find a kids' club while my parents would be interviewing people.

Growing up, I was going to school for broadcast journalism. I wanted to be Oprah.

I'm so used to talk-show hosts just giving you a sound bite and not really being interested.

Julie Chen. She's my ultimate celebrity idol. I think she's one of the most amazing interviewers and hosts ever - and would kill to pick her brain. I am a fangirl of talent, so to see someone slaying the competition doing what I'd love to do, that's inspiring to me.

It's not a very high failure rate if you choose people that you really like the sound of.

I used to say that interviewing others was perhaps the way I could stop talking and start listening. It's a kind of enforced silence.

I got offered to do a book yeah, and they said to me, 'Gem, you're so busy, how about we get someone to walk around with you with a dictaphone,' and that's how we did it.

Reporting makes you a better anchor and vice versa.

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

When I was in 10th grade, I took one of those tests that's supposed to tell you what you should be when you grow up. The test told me that I should be a journalist.

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver--that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.

You usually dont know what you are going to write about so you go to the places and talk to the people who were identified with the events.

I conducted a bunch of interviews for Interview magazine. They actually paid me. I think I was probably 18 or 19. I was in college and I remember feeling, like, "Wow." I had a real job, and they paid me money, and it was exciting.

I'm sure the next time Piers Morgan asks me to host his show again I will ask President Obama to be my guest.

I believe it's easier to be an actor. Somehow, interviewing seems to be intrusive on people's lives.

If the interview was done in the studio, Frank McGee would automatically do it. But if I went out and got it, then the interview was mine. So I was considered a pushy cookie, because I would get the interview.

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day.

Now, I talk to athletes who answer questions with a 'yeah'. I realize I used to do that. Or they answer very quickly and you stand there trying to come up with another question to ask. I've seen both sides and it's been very educational.

When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.

You've gotta understand - when you interview someone, it's not an interrogation. It's not the Nuremberg Trials.

When my editors and I at 'Rolling Stone' came up with the idea to do a profile of General McChrystal, I simply just e-mailed General McChrystal's press staff, said we wanted to do a profile, and said if you could give us any time to hang out with the general, that would be great.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

I loved writing for the school newspaper. I liked to report and interview people, but I really liked to write columns, funny columns.

When you are interviewing someone, never let your camera person turn off the camera. The second you turn off the camera, they'll say the magic thing that you'd been looking for the whole interview. People want to relax after the performance is done. Don't be afraid of awkward silence. That is your friend.