Topic Selection Quotes

I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?"

Editing is such a voyeuristic treat for me. I land on a theme and ask authors to pen works that fit the topic.

Finding the right subject is the hardest part.

For the future, I would suggest avoiding subjects of too vast a scale. It would be useful to make out a list of fundamental questions on the matter to be dealt with, and discuss only those.

MySpace News is designed to let users decide what's most relevant to them, and we've given them hundreds of subjects to choose from.

When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say.

We live in a world where people are really hungry for information, and they're not hungry for information on subjects that they're not interested in.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

Everything I ask is a question from Tamron, like it or not. My team does not write my questions. We put together a segment. We talk about the elements that I want, but we have a conversation for that hour with our guests.

My first year making music was very experimental. I was trying to find my sound. My second year, I was more in my element. I knew what type of production I wanted to go over and the topics I wanted to address.

I come up with my jokes by thinking of a topic.

Knowing what I'll write about and what I won't has never really been a problem. I won't write about things that bore me.

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

I'm not tied to the news cycle. I can do an episode on cultural appropriation, not on Rachel Dolezal. We might make a joke about her, but that's not going to be the focus of the conversation.

I think there is a real value in an editorial point-of-view and in editorial curation, and in putting together an entire narrative around a set of topics is important.

Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you have parts you will show them more or less upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's than of your own choosing.

Some writers pick a topic and write around that, but I like to include it all.

If you want a show to talk about politics or the Muslim ban or whatever - someone should make that show. That's not what I'm interested in.

When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life.

I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.

I can't really see myself writing about politics because I'm not really into it, and one of the worst things you can do is write about things you're not into.

The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before.

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.

There are certain things that I'll hear about and that I think will make a great book and I put it in a file. Sometimes it's a situation that interests me, and I don't even realize what I'm trying to say about it until I get closer to it. Sometimes the book after that I've written 125 pages of, and I can tell you what the book is after that. I just sort of have a linear progression, but more than anything, the topics land in your lap. I don't feel that I go out searching for them.

Sometimes, so much of the difficulty is the question of 'What am I going to write about?' because the world is so vast.