Quotes by Bob Edwards

• The pictures are created by the listener, with a little help from the broadcaster. The pictures are perfect. If you're showing pictures, different things in that picture can distract from the spoken word.
• In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.
• I've never been able to predict the future of anything.
• With radio, the listener absorbs everything.
• It's also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one's brain. There are no pictures to distract.
• The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.
• I'm a very straight-laced, conservative news kind of guy.
• That's the problem with news interviews, you work your tail off to get prominent figures in the news on the radio, but once they've been on, the event passes, the urgency, the issues you talked about evaporate.
• Some are pre-taped interviews because maybe we can't get that person live or maybe we're not sure it's going to work out right so we tape it an hour in advance.
• Public radio has always been so powerless.
• People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.
• Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
• Nobody cares about your wardrobe, what your tie looks like, or even if you're wearing one, and I don't.
• Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.
• When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.
• Any outfit that has to beg its listeners for money is an organization that has to constantly please its listeners or it will dry up and go away. It shouldn't work when you think about it.
• I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.
• I wanted to be one of the voices in the box.
• I wake about 1 a.m. I'm in the office by 2 a.m. We're on the air at 5.
• I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.
• I think we're doing the right things for the right reasons. We're not doing it to sell products. We're not doing it to be popular. We're doing it because in our judgment these stories are important to do, and at this length and this much depth.
• I got to know every format of every station and who was on and what time.
• I go home by noon, and I'm in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.
• Good things just keep happening.
• But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before.
• In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.
• At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.
• If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.
• A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
• I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.
• Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.