21 Quotes by Robert Krulwich

to paraphrase science writer John D. Barrow … we know they are impossible and yet we can imagine them anyway. Our brains, it turns out, are not prisoners of the world we live in; we can fly free! We can, any time we like, create the impossible.

When you talk or write or film, you work with the music inside you, the music that formed you. Different generations have different musics in them, so whatever they do, it's going to come out differently, and it will speak in beats of their own generation.

When I was a teenager, I loved political conventions.

So many people are not aware that NPR writes things, 'posts' things. But we are spreading the word.

News, after all, is a spin of words and pictures. It's a kind of music. There are beats in a newscast, a newspaper story. Ed Murrow sounded like Ed Murrow. Huntley and Brinkley sounded different. Anderson Cooper, different still.

I did television for a very long time, but if you're on television, words don't count. What the eye sees beats the words. If you switch sides, from radio to television, you learn that the wordiness that you learn on the radio is useless or not nearly as powerful, and you have to learn to trust that the eye will just beat the ear.

I am fascinated by storytelling glue. Anytime I see someone who's good at it, I stop and wonder, 'How'd they 'do this? Why can't I tear myself away?

Great teaching - just plain old knock 'em dead, get it right, make 'em laugh, make 'em wonder instruction - is always going to be rare. Good teachers abound. Great ones are special.

Journalism doesn't have to be your first love... or your only love. You can come to it in desperation, because you can't think of anything better to do with your life, that it's this or the abyss. But once you get going... it helps if you love it.