The Best Strangers in the World Quotes

“I HOPE IT GOES WITHOUT saying that I believe in the importance of news. Democracy depends on accurate and truthful stories. But in these times that can feel apocalyptic, as we seem to grow increasingly alienated from the world and from one another, I keep returning to the truths I find in fiction.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“The most successful Facebook ad that Russian trolls purchased in 2016 reached well over a million people. It was called “Back the Badge,” described as a “Community of people who support our brave Police Officers.” The Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in Saint Petersburg, Russia, paid eighteen hundred dollars for it. The most popular Texas secession page on Facebook, which had more followers than the official Texas Democratic and Republican Facebook pages combined, was a Russian front. It was called Heart of Texas, and by the time Facebook took it down, it had a quarter million followers.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“We'd drive west to the fog of the coast. In Oregon, nobody calls it the beach, maybe to discourage false hopes of warm and sun.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening―A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“The trips were often as much of a blur as the palm trees whizzing by outside those windows.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening―A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Dipping into art can be an act of self-care. It can be a cure. And if it’s not a cure, it can be a relief that allows you to rest, to go back out to fight again.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening―A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Every time I put another installment of Monzer’s story on the air, listeners asked how they could help. And I felt conflicted about it… Should Monzer, or Mohammed, have gotten cash from a concerned NPR listener just because I happened to tell their stories and not others? And if they shouldn’t have, then why exactly was I asking these guys to narrate their most traumatic experiences for the world to witness? Was this just vampirism, where people poured their pain into my microphone, and I walked away with a paycheck? It is a central tenet of journalism that one of the best ways to tell a bug story is by telling a small one. But I wondered whether zeroing in on an individual’s story actually was a way of clearing the path to real change. Perhaps I was just narrowing the aperture, cutting global upheaval into bite-sized morseld for our audience.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening―A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“of journalists aspired to was never actually from nowhere.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“I often tell journalism students that if they finish a reporting project with exactly the story they had set out to find, something has gone wrong.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Suddenly the flak jacket and helmet that had made me feel so secure an hour ago just made me feel inept, like a dumb Western interloper trying to inure himself against the reality he was witnessing.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Jewish tradition states that no matter how rich or poor you are, there are two things that everyone gets exactly the same, with no signifiers of class or wealth: everyone gets buried in a simple wooden casket, and everyone gets married with a plain gold wedding band.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Every news organization keeps a long list of people who could die at any moment. Movie stars, politicians, musicians, athletes, and other towering figures from earlier generations are all on the list. Often, obituaries are written long before the celebrity takes that last breath. But beat reporters covering arts or politics generally don’t want to spend their time reporting stories that could sit on a shelf gathering dust for years.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“I found a career where I could perform those acts of translation, and be a liaison, for groups to which I had no personal connection beyond my journalistic interest. My microphone and headset served as a snorkel and mask. When I strapped them on, I could enter colorful”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It’s too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came. And he pushed, And they flew.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“Hector told me that while he might have regretted some of the choices he had made, he didn’t regret the life that he had lived. “I really think that suffering can be a way of understanding people,” he said. “You know, Mother Teresa said, ‘Lord, break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.’ I can’t say that. But I really am grateful that my heart has been broken a good many times. Because it does help me to love.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“friend in London named Ben Walters wrote his PhD on cabaret and queer performance art. He told me that he thinks too many performers—Americans especially—confuse cabaret with musical revue. A musical revue, he said, is just a bunch of songs strung together with some anecdotes. But a cabaret needs to grow and change over the course of the evening. It needs to create a relationship with the audience and end in a different place from where it began. It needs to have a reason to exist”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“I grew up not wanting to be myself.” After they grew up and explored the world, “I realized what I really wanted to be was myself.” That desire to be authentically true to themselves onstage comes through in every one of Viv’s performances.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“I remembered that a live audience does provide some qualities a radio broadcast lacks. There is a moment that everybody shares, together in one place. An experience that will never exist again in quite that way. Everybody breathes the same air molecules for a brief stretch of time. There’s an audible reaction as you walk the high wire and nail the performance, or tumble off the tightrope and try to climb back on and salvage your dignity. I love how intimate and personal radio can be; those qualities appeal to my instinct to connect. But I also love how communal live performance is; that appeals to my instinct to form a collective.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“I think so much of our attention has been placed on trying to identify what is wrong. I want to create work that is about making the world that I want, as opposed to commenting on the world that is.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World

“waver; I just wanted to do what all my straight friends were doing, tie the knot, and get on with my life. But the low-key option wasn’t available to me.”
― Ari Shapiro, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening—A Poignant Journey Through Journalism, Global Connections, and Human Resilience in Today's World