Willie Geist

“Chris Rock is a very funny man.”

“An ideal day starts with putting on a good, smart, fun show where I learn something and ends with me fending off atomic knee drops from my two kids in our no-holds-barred pillow fight/steel cage matches. They are a ruthless tag team.”

“Unintentional comedy is comedy just the same.”

“Everyone worries about their kids, of course, but you can drive yourself nuts thinking about all the horrible things in the world - and many, many people do. I believe life is to be lived and not survived.”

“I can't say for sure where I was headed the first time my mom put a blue blazer on me. Church, probably. West Side Presbyterian in Ridgewood, New Jersey, specifically, where my blazer was paired with a clip-on tie and a pair of khakis for a Sunday morning with my fellow congregants.”

“High on the list of things I've been meaning to do since I moved to New York in 2004 is going up to a Columbia University football game.”

“People know the facts of a story just as well as the people on TV do, and they have more platforms to hold the media accountable when they don't get it right. We are a world full of media experts. That's a great thing.”

“The great 'New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson famously slept one year in a child's race-car bed. There he was, Pulitzer Prize and all, snoring as his feet dangled over the rear tires of Lightning McQueen.”

“I got into television in 1998 when I didn't have a computer or even an email address.”

“I was a big Dave Winfield guy growing up.”

“I don't think anybody's quite accurately branded me. I'm not sure I could do it myself.”

“When you work in TV long enough, you tend to get a little jaded with different things you have to deal with.”

“When you live in New York City, you run up a long list of things you've been meaning to do.”

“I think there's something about the homemade birthday cake, because my wife, on my daughter's first birthday, started the tradition where she takes a full cake and cuts the number birthday out of it.”

“There's a lot to be said for going to baseball games for a living.”

“It doesn't matter if you're famous or infamous. All that matters is you're a celebrity.”

“In a tradition second in wonderful absurdity only to 60-year-old baseball managers wearing uniforms and spikes in the dugout, golf spectators come dressed ready to play 18.”

“The thing about me is that I don't judge my audience. I welcome. It is a big tent.”

“Watching 'CSI: Miami' is like watching 'Teen Jeopardy!' or doing the crossword puzzle in 'People' magazine. It makes you feel smart even when you're not.”

“Landing on 'Morning Joe' wasn't a fluke. I was a poli sci major in college. I interned at the CBS political unit, covered conventions.”