Lester Holt Quotes

#1. The one thing I don't consume during 'Today' - which surprises many people - is coffee. I find that a lot of water helps wake me up, without the buzz. I love coffee, but usually reserve a double espresso as an afternoon pick-me-up before settling in to do the weekend 'Nightly News.'

Lester Holt

#2. I'm not terribly athletic. And ... there's a lot of things I'm not good at. And if it makes anybody feel better, I was really a pretty bad math student growing up.

Lester Holt

#3. Not to get too deep on shaving my mustache, but it was kind of symbolic of, 'This is a moment of liberation, a chance to reinvent yourself.' That's kind of what I did.

Lester Holt

#4. I've never been one to carry race on my sleeve, and I've never been one to really use my race.

Lester Holt

#5. As a 13, - 14-year-old kid, I'd sit on my bed with a tape recorder and a newspaper. I would do my own newscast. I would practice my diction.

Lester Holt

#6. I never believed the anchorman should be the know-it-all. And I try to communicate that to the audience. While I have some knowledge from my years of experience, what I want to do is walk you through this because we're all walking through this together.

Lester Holt

#7. Sometimes, I'll be flipping the channel at home and think, 'Wow, there's a lot of me on TV.'

Lester Holt

#8. On more than one occasion, the camera has cut to me after a break as I'm still trying to swallow the last bite of cookie. Those of you who have thought to yourselves, 'That guy talks like he has marbles in his mouth,' should know that they are not marbles, but oatmeal cookies.

Lester Holt

#9. I have a couple of basses in my office. And I try to be courteous of my co-workers, but sometimes I get carried away and I crank up my amp and I rock out. It's kind of my stress reliever.

Lester Holt

#10. You can't exactly do it from your hotel room. It's the weather; you've got to get out in it. You're telling people that there are 70 mile-per-hour winds. So it's like, 'Let's prove it.'

Lester Holt

#11. The biggest thing I worry about is the unsubstantiated story. You have to tell the people what you know
and acknowledge what you don't know.

Lester Holt

#12. You know there's some great folks, great story telling at 'Dateline,' and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Lester Holt

#13. A lot of times we work across multiple platforms. We'll go to Japan working on the tsunami for 'Nightly News' and it'll end up on 'Dateline.'

Lester Holt

#14. I remember when I interviewed at MSNBC, one of the first things they said to me was, 'In your tapes, you had a mustache, right?' I said, 'Yeah, I recently took it off.' I said, 'If you hire me, you get to decide if you want it or not.' They said, 'No, no, we're fine with it now.'

Lester Holt

#15. At the end of the day, I'm reading the news. I'm not digging ditches. I'm not fighting fires. It's a long day, and it's a lot of responsibility, and it can be a little bewildering sometimes with the schedule. But, you know, it's a job, and they pay me well to do a job.

Lester Holt

#16. Everyone knows I'm black. I am who I am. This is the person that Lester Sr. and June Holt raised, and I make no apology for it. At the same time, I'm never going to pull a race card to get what I want. You can't have it both ways.

Lester Holt

#17. I reluctantly soldiered on to the raccoon. It actually would have tasted quite good had I not had the image of a raccoon rummaging through the garbage stuck in my head.

Lester Holt

#18. I have this vision of maybe going the way of Bill Kurtis and, I think, Tom Brokaw, to a certain extent - the ability to not be tied to the desk anymore, but to do projects that are meaningful to you.

Lester Holt

#19. You never know what doors are going to open up and why they are going to open up. You've got to be ready to walk through them.

Lester Holt

#20. The issues of the day have never seemed more complicated, and yet the conversations over how to solve them increasingly resemble cars passing down a divided highway. Whizzing by without a glance.

Lester Holt

#21. What I've come to know is that in life, it's not always the questions we ask, but rather our ability to hear the answers that truly enriches our understanding. Never, never stop learning.

Lester Holt

#22. I'm a morning person, so rising at 4-something on weekends is not a huge challenge for me. I am not, however, much of a morning eater - not at that hour, at least.

Lester Holt

#23. You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you're essentially running to things that other people are running away from.

Lester Holt

#24. Anybody who was in the military or a military family has a certain sensitivity to the separation. Everyone knows military wives have the hardest jobs. I was born into one. When I think back to those days, I didn't appreciate it then.

Lester Holt