Quotes by Journalists - Page 166

…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.
Ernest Hemingway
The following is a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9-10, 1967. And yet, while all the characters in this story are little green men and women running around inside my head, the events that served as inspiration, the historical facts, as it were, must be considered no less than a sibling of the tale contained in these pages: the story I didn't write, but could have written--the book this could have been, but isn't.
Montague Kobbé
It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.
Albert Camus
The New START accord cuts the strategic nuclear arsenals on each side to 1,550 warheads. Can any of its critics make a case that our security would be imperiled if, the very next day, Obama and Medvedev made moves to take the levels down to 1,000—then to 500?If so, come show us the math. If not, it may be time to stop making arms control so politically complicated—time to stop letting arms control get in the way of disarmament.
Fred Kaplan
...our monsters walk the dark pathways of secret motives...
John Geddes
Results for "A man is like a cat; chase him and he'll run; sit still and ignore him and he'll come purring at your feet
Helen Rowland
After eighteen long months covering this dreary business, the whole campaign appears in my mind’s eye as one long, protracted scratch-fight over Internet-fueled nonsense.
Matt Taibbi
Always a godfather - never a god!
Alexander Woollcott
There is a small wooden viewing tower, and pamphlets from the State of Ohio, but they focus on facts—for instance, the Serpent Mound is as long as four football fields—not on meaning. In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen, a Native poet, mythologist, and scholar, explains that Serpent Woman was one of the names of the quintessential original spirit “that pervades everything, that is capable of powerful song and radiant movement, and that moves in and out of the mind…she is both Mother and Father to all people and all creatures. She is the only creator of thought, and thought precedes creation.” In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.
Gloria Steinem
All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. Physical rebellion, or any preliminary move toward rebellion, is at present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is. They could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly; but since military and commercial rivalry are no longer important, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold,or do not hold, is looked on as matter of indifference. They can me granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.
George Orwell
They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed. If the terrorists had hoped their attacks would reveal the weaknesses in western society, the events in Gander proved its strength.
Jim DeFede
The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.
Chuck Klosterman
We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs.
Jean-Dominique Bauby
In order to write about life first you must live it.
Ernest Hemingway
I wonder, said the Lord I wonder if I know the answer any more.
Norman Mailer
Then someone cried out, “Suicide bomber!” The crowd panicked. In the ensuing stampede, terrified pilgrims ran in both directions, many colliding in the middle of the bridge. A side railing collapsed under their weight, and scores leaped into the water whether they could swim or not. Hundreds were trampled to death. More than a thousand died. Hundreds of pairs of sandals were scattered around the bridge, left behind when pilgrims made their desperate dives into the river. I was given all of seventy-five seconds to tell the story on the Nightly News.
Richard Engel
The school is a mother
Edmondo de Amicis
A bore is a man who when you ask him how he is tells you.
Bert Leston Taylor
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true.... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.
Christopher Hitchens
Being well known for being well-known did not necessarily imply intelligence.
David Halberstam
Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his thumb for this, softer and subtler than the plectrum, his head bent to the vibrating string and his lips slightly open, breathing quickly, as over the body of a lover.
Ann Wroe
...writing is not a performance but a generosity.
Brenda Ueland
The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man’s frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.
Max Lerner
We kind of missed the boat on that," he recalled. " So we needed to catch up real fast." The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it find itself behind.
Walter Isaacson
[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.
Nicholas Carr
No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
The playwright Edward Albee has characterized [the suddenness of the appearance of fruits and flowers in evolutionary history] as 'that heartbreaking second when it all got together: the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets.
Adam Leith Gollner
Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was even better (.399, 20 HR, 61 RBIs). He was leading the league in nearly every category, including invisibility.
Jonathan Eig
They talk about prohibition in America. What can one do in a country such as that?   'What does one do in America when one is sad - without alcohol?' asks Zwonimir.
Joseph Roth
Never give up. Things may be hard, but if you quit trying they'll never get better. Stop worrying and start trusting God. It will be worth it.
Germany Kent
Every life has one true love snapshot.
Mitch Albom
During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.
Tahir Shah
Because history became his (Keenan's) genuine passion, he tended to see the world in terms of deep historical forces that, in his mind, formed a nation's character in ways almost beyond the consciousness of the men who momentarily governed it, as if these historical impulses were more a part of them than they knew.
David Halberstam
He is a true casualty of battle. There's not a physical scar, but look at the man's heart, and his head, and there are scars galore.
David Finkel
The process begins during the off-season program, when players spend countless hours together and become heavily invested in the season before it even starts. It continues during these weekly meetings, when players stand and deliver heartfelt testimonials. You can't play for Ladouceur unless you're willing to stand in front of your teammates and bare your soul. You can't play unless you're willing to cry.
Neil Hayes
He dropped his head and kissed her. He kisses her and it was a kiss of utter certainty, the kind of kiss during which monarchs die and whole continents fall without your even noticing.
Jojo Moyes
The Air Force was confused about what it wanted me to be when I grew up. I applied for an ROTC scholarship out of high school because I wanted to be an astronaut. None of my teachers had ever broken the news to me that I couldn’t fly into space, so the third-grade dream remained.
Brian Castner
Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a Prozac nation. The United States of Depression.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.
Émile Zola
Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that, well spent, returns ever greater riches.
Tim Radford
Speak with caution. Even if someone forgives harsh words you've spoken, they may be too hurt to ever forget them. Don't leave a legacy of pain and regret of things you never should have said.
Germany Kent
Sarat smiled at the thought. "You couldn't just let us kill ourselves in peace, could you?""Come now," said Yousef. "Everyone fights an American war.
Omar El Akkad
Oi, doll, ignore him,' said Sia, using a notebook to fan her face. 'Sweet lord, I'm like a human hot-water bottle wrapped in doona in front of a heater at the moment. And did I tell you about the constant farting?
Gabrielle Tozer
I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable
Alfred Lansing
Allan interrupted the two brothers by saying that he had been out and about in the world and if there was one thing he had learned it was that the very biggest and apparently most impossible conflicts on earth were based on the dialogue: “You are stupid, no, it’s you who are stupid, no, it’s you who are stupid.” The solution, said Allan, was often to down a bottle of vodka together and then look ahead.
Jonas Jonasson
A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.
Sally Magnusson
At Abraham's burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier. The text reports their union nearly without comment. "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites." But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished. Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They are brothers. They are mourners. In a sense they are us, forever weeping for the loss of our common father, shuffling through our bitter memories, reclaiming our childlike expectations, laughing, sobbing, furious and full of dreams, wondering about our orphaned future, and demanding the answers we all crave to hear: What did you want from me, Father? What did you leave me with, Father? And what do I do now?
Bruce Feiler
Poverty is not just a sad accident. Yes, it’s partly about lack of jobs, “but it’s also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.” Matthew Desmond
Jennifer Schuessler
Not a very pretty world, is it?""Which one?
Andrew Smith
Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator’s underpants!Chase’s thoughts raced.
Cole Alpaugh
No one likes to be typecast or stereotyped, especially actors. But who would know Esther Williams without a swimming pool, Bela Lugosi without a cape, or Elvis Presley without his guitar. Would we even care?
Susan Marg
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
George Orwell
...I realize that lessons are meant to be learned, honored even, or else you can spend your life running so far from them that you erect a false existence around the very thing you should be embracing.
Allison Winn Scotch
I quickly dropped my hands and changed the subject. "So those two who visited me the other night. Who were they?" I asked.He smiled, knowingly. "Ares and Aphrodite."Of course, I thought. In fact, I think I had already sort of figured that out. Although in my mind they were still Mr. Scowly Face and Miss Perfect Bitch. I found those the names I had given them much more appropriate
Robin Burks
The seventh reader interrupts you: "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death."You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla.
Italo Calvino
Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].
Christopher Hitchens
Madness is part of all of us all the time and it comes and goes waxes and wanes.
Otto Friedrich
They were like animals, men. They found too much eye contact threatening.
Jojo Moyes
The tree burst into color and we all gasped at the red, yellow, green, white and the blue lights boldly growing in the cold night, the only lights for miles around in the inmense darkness of the range.
Jeannette Walls
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
Tahir Shah