Quotes & Sayings About Old Time Radio

Make sure you control the radio on a long road trip. You don't want to listen to some old-fashioned music the whole time. — Preston Shay

We listen to the old radio shows. Light flares and spreads across the blue-banded edge, sunrise, sunset, the urban grids in shadow. There is a sweetness in the tenor voice of the young man singing, a simple vigour that time and distance and random noise have enveloped in eloquence and yearning. Every sound, every lilt of strings has this veneer of age. — Don DeLillo

I don't really listen to my old stuff, but on occasion, I would either hear a track on the radio or a friend might play me one, and there was generally a bit of an edgy sound to it, which was mainly due to the digital equipment that we were using, which was state of the art at the time - and I think everyone felt pressured to be working that way. — Kate Bush

We look so very different from the way we sound. It's a shock, similar to hearing your own voice for the first time, when you're forced to wonder how the rest of you comes across if you sound nothing like the way you think you sound. You feel dislodged from the old shoe of yourself. — Elizabeth Hay

Lately, though, he'd just been tired in general. Tired of people. Tired of books and TV and the nightly news and songs on the radio he'd heard years before and hadn't liked much in the first place. He was tired of his clothes and tired of his hair and tired of other people's clothes and other people's hair. He was tired of wishing things made sense. He'd gotten to a point where he was pretty sure he'd heard everything anyone had to say on any given subject and so it seemed he spent his days listening to old recordings of things that hadn't seemed fresh the first time he'd heard them.
Maybe he was simply tired of life, of the absolute effort it took to get up every goddamned morning and walk out with into the same fucking day with only slight variations in the weather and food.
He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope. — Dennis Lehane

Imagine you're a forty-year-old, Richard," Hamilton said to me around this time, while working as a salesman at a Radio Shack in Lynn Valley,"and suddenly somebody comes up to you saying, 'Hi, I'd like you to meet Kevin. Kevin is eighteen and will be making all of your career decisions for you.' I'd be flipped out. Wouldn't you? But that's what life is all about - some eighteen-year-old kid making your big decisions for you that stick for a lifetime." He shuddered. — Douglas Coupland

Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. — Robert M. Pirsig

Old ladies photographed by CBS who announced that they would die of malnutrition if Reagan's bill were passed could probably have saved themselves their impending penury by the simple device of applying to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for scale every time they were featured by Dan Rather or whoever. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I thought A Prairie Home Companion would be an interesting thing to do for a summer or so. Public radio was just seven years old in 1974. It was a tiny organization in which a lot of things got started simply because there was all this time to fill. If you wanted to do an hour on Lithuanian folk dancing, you probably could have done it. — Garrison Keillor

The first time I knew what I wanted to do with my life was when I was about four years old. I was listening to an old Victrola, playing a railroad song ... I thought that was the most wonderful, amazing thing ... That you could take this piece of wax and music would come out of that box. From that day on, I wanted to sing on the radio. — Johnny Cash

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio. — Douglas Kennedy

One practice I rely on all the time is basic meditation which allows me to strip away the noise. Its like the old-fashioned dial on the radio, where you were getting static and then you found that clear, sweet spot on the dial, where the music would come through. That's what meditation is for me. Dialing out the static, the noise, the anxiety, the fear, and coming into a place that's deep and quiet. It's like dropping into a well of inspiration and wisdom. — Elizabeth Lesser

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things. — Ray Bradbury

I used to think I couldn't go a day without your smile. Without telling you things and hearing your voice back.
Then, that day arrived and it was so damn hard but the next was harder. I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse, and I wasn't going to be okay for a very long time.
Because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug; whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile.
I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish could tell you about my day. And in the morning, when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheets, begin to lose you all over again. — Lang Leav

From the time I was 8 years old I was on almost every radio show there was. — Dick Van Patten

In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that. — Kate Atkinson

I have lived twice as long as I should have," the oldest one said, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up against each other around his vocal chords, "and I've never seen so many people so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the Devil's work. — Salman Rushdie

I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me had become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations -- with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days. All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country -- contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness -- hating the night when I couldn't sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day. — F Scott Fitzgerald

They sat in a row on the couches and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish or on nothing or something they saw a long time ago.
Francis would always remember the shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of old people like meat wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio. — Thomas Harris

I felt a connection with him that time never erases with someone you know, like when you hear a song on the radio and all those old feelings of a special time in your life come flooding back. That was Austin - he was my song. — Dannika Dark

Back when he was a kid, about eleven years old, he used to go looking for cars that had "No Radio in Car" signs on them. He'd take a removable radio, of a type that was very popular at the time, and throw it as hard as he could at the car window with a note wrapped around it that read, now you have one. — Keith R.A. DeCandido

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states. — Tony Campolo

His death took place on the same day, at the same time of the same month as Katie's: Monday 12th November at 4am in the morning, on her tenth year anniversary. The old radio suddenly came live and the song Immortality by Celine Dion played. Emma proved you can love the man and hate the disease. She was relieved Ronan's suffering had ended and that he had gone before her as he was so ill — Annette J. Dunlea

The sidewalk was all cracked and wavy, like little hills, and the weeds pushed their way up through the cement. I had to roller-skate there anyway, because they wouldn't let me out of their sight, and they could watch me from the swing on the front porch of the old house. It was hard to skate there, and I kept falling down and getting sores on my knees...Sometimes, when they left me alone in 102 to go to the store, I'd turn on the radio and dance all around the room. I'd get on the furniture and jump from couch to the bed to the chair, leaping and twirling the whole time. — Carol Burnett

Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you're working all the time, so you're learning rather than sitting around and waitressing. — Lydia Leonard

Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence. — Dan Simmons

I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief. — Christian Fennesz

I was about 16 years old years when my father took me to a square dance festival in North Carolina. For the first time in my life, I found there was music in my country that you never heard on the radio, and you didn't hear on the juke boxes, and in theaters. I fell in love with it, especially the long-necked banjos. — Pete Seeger

For me, I like old-school rap music. There was a time when music was so, so rich overall, and the content of what people talked about was so deep on every level, song-for-song, pound-for-pound, and on radio, there was so much content. I gravitate more towards that type of music, to be honest. — Ciara

She had been amazed-and a little relieved-to discover that she was not concealing some private neurosis; almost all imaginative people heard voices. Not just thoughts but actual voices inside their heads, different personae, each as clearly defined as the voices on an old-time radio show. They came from the right side of the brain, the teacher explained-the side which is most commonly associated with visions of telepathy and that striking human ability to create images by drawing comparisons and making metaphors.
There are no such things as flying saucers. — Stephen King

Voiceover work reminds me of old-time radio. When I was little I used to sneak and stay up at night and listen to Mystery Radio Theater - I loved all those old radio plays. — Virginia Madsen

So many people have the TV or radio constantly turned on "for company," or spend their time reading trashy novels, aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. Then suddenly one day you are old or sick and you realize you have done nothing with your life. All your thoughts are other people's thoughts and you have no idea who you really are or what the purpose of your life might be. — Karen Kingston

My first job was singing on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was about 10 years old, and I thought it was big time. — Dolly Parton

One of the reasons I love working in voiceover (and audiobooks) so much is that I'm an old soul, and every time I go up to the microphone, I feel like I'm doing a classic radio play or something. I really like that. — Jason Frazier

The very first time I ever heard anything of mine on the radio, I was in New Jersey, and I was in my teens. I did my first record, which was an old standard called 'My Mother's Eyes.' It was the old Georgie Jessel theme. I heard it on local radio out of Newark. And it was very exciting! — Frankie Valli

If you have a radio, the next three months is a good time to have it quit working. All you will hear from now until the 4th of November will be: 'We must get our government out of the hands of predatory wealth.' 'The good people of this great country are burdened to death with taxes. Now what I intend to do is ... ' What he intends to do is try and get elected. That's all any of them intend to do. Another one that will hum over the old static every night will be: 'This country has reached a crisis in its national existence.' — Will Rogers

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play. — Sam Neill