Interviewing Quotes

I loved my time at MTV because the music was critical; the music was our thrust. That’s what the channel was all about. And I loved that, because we were pushing the limits with how we were covering and interviewing and consuming music and bands.

I spent a lot of time with the LAPD. I spent six weeks training, weapons training, ride-alongs, surveillance, interviewing them, in all different departments and divisions.

My kids are really dope. I was just at home in Chicago, and my daughter Brittany was interviewing me. It was like I was on ‘Oprah.’

It’s the rejection that is hard. It’s not the interviewing that’s hard. It’s not the photography that’s hard. It’s, you know, approaching people all day long and having a good portion of those people reject you and some of them be rude.

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.

If we’re interviewing someone and they really care about having a certain title, I usually think, ‘Let’s hire someone else.’ You want someone who will say, ‘I truly believe in the company’s future. I want to own part of this company. I believe I can grow its value.’

In China, because Chinese is a tonal language, it can be kind of hard to follow people’s emotional tracks. There was one moment where a woman I was interviewing just sort of burst into tears, and I can usually sort of tell when things are coming on, and in that moment, it was very unexpected.

I wasn’t supposed to be walking with Mark Zuckerberg. I wasn’t supposed to be interviewing Romney’s sons. Why was I doing it? Because I wanted to survive. I wanted to live. I wanted to earn what it means to be an American.

When you are interviewing someone, don’t just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

When I’m interviewing somebody, I take notes with a Bic Cristal, the classic black-cap, clear-body, medium-weight pen. It works on many levels: You can chew the cap, and if you’re really bored, you can bite the end off the back.

And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing.

The interviews have been a little tough due to the fact that we’re interviewing dogs. We see a lot of contestants licking themselves, but we’re used to that from covering the Grammys.

Interviewers, even the ones that support the person they’re interviewing, have an obligation to probe further and push back when a candidate says something dangerous.

Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living.

When I turned 50, I truly felt I was too old to work in Silicon Valley. No one said anything to my face, but when you can be the mother of some of the people you’re interviewing with, that says it all.

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

We’re trying to create one holistic beauty experience where you can be inspired by other women, both the people we’re interviewing and the community contributing to the conversation.

I’m not being arrogant or blase, but I got a bigger buzz sitting opposite Jean-Bernard Delmas over lunch at Chateau Haut-Brion than I did from interviewing Elton John, Liza Minelli or Whitney Houston.

So often on CNN, there’s a world-class journalist interviewing campaign rejects and ideologues and silly, craven people who do not care about informing people, that aren’t there to help people understand what’s going on in the news.

I started reading and talking and interviewing nutritionists and a thread was starting to form for me which is – a protein digests in a different rate of speed than a carbohydrate.

Profiling, listening in on anyone and everybody who looks suspicious, or interviewing Muslims in a more intense way than interviewing Christian refugees is all acceptable.

I volunteered at Ayuda, in the office, on a regular basis, and I did everything from fingerprinting and interviewing persons of Hispanic origin who entered the country without inspection and who were seeking work-authorization permits.

Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print – writing in English, interviewing Americans – validated my presence here.

I am really bad at actually interviewing people.

I used to have a voice because I was interviewing people and writing, but as soon as I got swept up in the fashion world, I was just a pretty girl at a party wearing a pretty dress.

I love researching, I love interviewing.

I was interviewing an elder, Chief Fool’s Crow, who was the ceremonial chief. He was 103 years old. I was getting his information on the history of Lakota horses. He told me the story of Hidalgo and Frank Hopkins.

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.

I thought I was going to do some cult, cool, late-night interviewing thing on BBC2. But everyone kept saying: ‘No, Michael, you’re teatime, you’re not cool.’

Managers get interviewed for jobs, but I think it should be the managers who are interviewing the chairman.

I know Peter Jackson a tiny-tiny bit from interviewing him about the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies over the years. When I was visiting the set of ‘The Return of the King,’ he let me be an extra so I could see filmmaking from a different perspective. I was a Rohan soldier.

As a professional journalist, I’ve been interviewing people for almost thirty years. And the one thing I’ve learned from all those interviews is that I am always going to be surprised.

My policy with interviewing is I’m not there to teach the people I’m across from a lesson.

I would go to radio stations and they were supposed to be interviewing me and playing my record and they would say, We’re playing too many women right now, we can’t play your record.

We all prospect, and don’t even know we’re doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you’re interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs.

It doesn’t matter if I go on CBS, PBS or Fox. Whoever is interviewing me is going to want to create some conflict in the story, or it’s not interesting. That’s just the way the news is.

When I was interviewing Hillary Clinton, I knew when I’d ask her something that she wasn’t going to give me the complete truth because she would break eye contact with me.

Interviewing is not a democratic art.

I’d never be tied down for five years interviewing TV personalities.

But I really like hosting, I think it’s a strength of mine. It allows me to improvise, and I love the spontaneity of that, and I think I’m funny behind the desk when interviewing someone.

I have the version of me where I’m interviewing someone, where I definitely am the straight man, and I like to show a lot of respect to my guest and let them take the reins. I don’t like to compete with my guests. I don’t like to be funnier than my guests or get into a ‘Who’s wackier?’ sort of thing.

I actually have videos on my phone of me interviewing people and asking them what they thought of the new Spider-Man in ‘Civil War.’ They were like, ‘Oh he’s great. I love him,’ and then some people were like, ‘Nah, I don’t love him. he’s not great’ – and I was standing right in front of them!

There are videos I used to take at home, pretending to be a newscaster, interviewing the teapot or my house cat.

I never dreamed when I was competing at The Championships that I would one day be interviewing the winners on Centre Court for the BBC.

Weight is just not a hot button. In fact, during my life, it probably should have been on my radar screen a bit more. I look back at work photos and am shocked. Was I eating the people I was interviewing?! Good Lord, I was big.

I wrote ’33 Men’ in eight weeks. Not only was it a combination of simultaneously writing and interviewing, but as I dug deeper into the miners’ story, I found the key to their success was the ability to place their individuality on the back burner and bring forward the sense of a collective group responsibility.

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter – nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.

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.

In September 2005, I was three things: the media blogger for ‘FishbowlNY,’ a maniacal Daily Show fan, and the only person to smuggle a tape recorder and camera into a big Magazine Publishers of America event featuring Jon Stewart interviewing five hotshot magazine editors in an unbelievable bloodbath.

So many of us can recall growing up with Gene Okerlund as the voice of our childhoods while interviewing the likes of Andre The Giant, Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Ultimate Warrior, Randy Savage, Sting, and others.

In years of interviewing presidents, prime ministers and chief executives all over the world, I can remember only a handful of times in which a leader has said: ‘I don’t know’ in answer to a question. Perhaps everyone I have ever interviewed knows everything about everything, but I doubt it.

The idea of interviewing someone is that you are getting their first off-the-cuff impression or response. You don’t want them to have the chance to really prepare.

I’m used to presenting programs about pop music, interviewing pop stars, and hosting awards.

No longer do companies study consumers’ psyches only by asking people what they think about technology and how they use it. Now they conduct observational research, dispatching anthropologists to employ their ethnographic skills by interviewing, watching and videotaping consumers in their natural habitats.

One of the difficulties about interviewing people in Rwanda is that the country is trying to get on with ordinary life and some people just don’t want to get involved in this.

My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.

I was interviewing Daniel Craig and Naomie Harris for a Bond film a few years ago, and the moment I sat down, my dress ripped. No more bodycon numbers for me. I had to walk out of the room backwards when I was done.

I did my degree in journalism, and I then went on to being a games journalist, reviewing and previewing games and writing about the industry, visiting and interviewing developers.

Jane Fonda was at the top of my list of women to meet and the only time I felt nervous about interviewing someone. She is one of the most dynamic women I have ever had the honor of talking to.

When you’re interviewing someone, you’re in control. When you’re being interviewed, you think you’re in control, but you’re not.

Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.

When I graduated from UCLA, I actually started interviewing for banking jobs. But at some point I realized a career in banking felt more like a continuation of school than a passion.

Confidence has a lot to do with interviewing – that, and timing.

I like doing the readings and the autographing, but the interviewing gets a little tedious because you get asked the same questions every day and sometimes three or four times a day.

I was in sixth grade. I loved TV news. I acknowledge that I was also in awe of Barbara Walters interviewing Patrick Swayze and dancing with him.

Whenever television cameras are interviewing people in their homes, I tend to look over their shoulders and have a good snoop at their living rooms. I am always astonished at how clean they all look, with nothing out of place or unnecessary or dropped down any old how.

Which is worse – being a has-been or being the guy interviewing a has-been?

I’ve had some pretty rough interviews. And it’s funny when people are interviewing you, and they sort of don’t really understand what you do, and they kind of insult you.

I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests’ lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I’m interviewing somebody, I’m getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory.

When I’m interviewing someone, I want to make sure that he thought enough to take care of himself – to dress appropriately and to groom himself properly.

People like me, when we’re interviewing, we’re not going back to our desktop to fill out a recruiting form. If I can quickly submit my evaluation through an iPhone or an iPad, that makes me a lot more productive.

I think interviews are good when you are an actual fan of the person you are interviewing.

At a particularly dicey moment in my own love life when I was interviewing Rupert Murdoch a number of years ago, I tried to get some advice from him about, well, about anything a man with three wives, the latest the age of his children, might offer.

I love meeting American voters. I get to interview a lot of politicians but I always enjoy interviewing ordinary people the most – though most of them are anything but ordinary. Everyone has an interesting story to tell.

I was very nervous interviewing Genesis on Radio 2. I felt out of my depth and somebody tweeted afterwards: Sara Cox interviewing Genesis – what a waste. I was crushed, because I kind of knew it was true.

Interviewing Rei Kawakubo in Tokyo and John Galliano in Paris, both for ‘Pop’ magazine, were huge for me, not just in learning about fashion and writing but about how little desire I had to be a critic/reporter/journalist/commentator so much as a kind of travel diarist.

We see women on the field; we see them interviewing players, we see them coming out of the dugout. But if you put them in the booth – like, hold up, wait a second – you haven’t been there before. This is different.

By interviewing at least one veteran, you can preserve memories that otherwise might be lost. My uncle was a downed fighter pilot and P.O.W. in World War II, and I am looking forward to recording his story for inclusion in the project.

Working as a journalist, I was always tempted to lie. I felt I could do dialogue better than the person I was interviewing. I felt I could lie better than Nixon and be more concise than some random person I was covering.

A lot of times, going into the interview, you have an idea of maybe what you want to talk about. And the people you are interviewing have an idea of what they want to talk about.

If Barbara Walters was interviewing me, I’d figure her career was as dead as mine!

If there is one way that I would sum up what the 2016 election was on cable news, it was world-class journalists interviewing morons.

I get the team set up good and then I’ll let them do their thing. At the end of the day, if you put the time and effort into interviewing and finding the right people for a job, you’ve got to let them do that job.

When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.

Interviewing is fun. You get to learn things about people other than yourself. When you’re being interviewed, you’re talking about things you’ve already lived. I’ve already done that, so what fun is that?

Interviewing Michael Jordan is like playing him one on one. If he respects you and especially your media platform and he’s amused by your college try, he’ll let you get off a shot or two. Then he’ll go behind his back, give you a head fake and leave you wondering exactly what he meant by this and that.

People do more important jobs than acting in film that should be recognised, but for some reason it’s big money, so people are elevated in status. If I was a bus driver, I’m sure you wouldn’t be interviewing me.

I want to be a late night host and the podcast is a way for me to do longer form interviews and to get better at interviewing.

Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they’re having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.

My interviewing style and my approach to things is that, yes, it’s okay to be sincere; it’s okay to be yourself; it’s okay to be real.

The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person, but the person whom you are about to discover. You know, like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you’re realizing how great they are.

I remember interviewing someone I actually felt bad for, and therefore didn’t want to take an ironic stance against him. It actually turned out to be a really funny piece.

In 2009, I served as AARP’s Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

As a young man… you don’t know anything about yourself. And add on to that, you’re on the cover of magazines. People are interviewing you about what you think. You feel like a real phony.

When you consider how many people are really not good at communication in general and interviewing in specific, it’s no wonder that many companies struggle to build high-quality partnerships – or even staffs.

At the Human Rights Foundation, I love being able to drive an interview and value-connecting with someone I’m interviewing so that they feel comfortable enough to open up and share their story with me.

I try to see interviewing as performance art, and just take it as it comes.

I am interviewing people with a spirit of genuine interest and compassion, and therefore, the general tone of the site is one of genuine interest and compassion. The moment that culture changes, ‘Humans of New York’ is no longer viable.

Interviewing someone is very similar to preparing a character, isn’t it? You’re just asking questions: ‘Who is this person? Why did they make that choice? Why are they doing that?’ You’re being Sherlock Holmes.