How to write a great speech—guaranteed

The reporter asked me and a number of other speechwriting people, “Can a person set out to write ‘enduring words,’ or do words—speeches, plays, poems, essays, novels, etc.—simply endure because they represent a particular moment in time/history or because they’re of a particular beauty?”

I gave her an answer that I’ve found fits most basic questions about what makes good speeches: The way to make an impact is to deliver a speech that only you can deliver to a particular group of people at a particular moment in history. “Do that, and you have a chance—a one in a million chance—to be remembered by history,” I told her. “But if you do that, you have a hundred percent chance of being appreciated by the audience in front of you.”