c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I think I was about to say that if I ever see Eliza again—and the fact that this is even a remote possibility is—I don’t know what it is, a goddamn miracle, maybe? After I kiss her and hold her and let her touch my chest, I’m going to hang her upside down and employ Chinese water torture until she promises never to be so stupid again.
— Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star
I tried for a decade not to feel anything,” I said. I didn’t wipe away the tear that broke free. He’d already seen me cry. Erwin had seen me in literally every humor except perfectly happy. I had nothing to hide. ”Why are you making this happen?”He leaned in and we opened the space between ourselves once more just so he could kiss the tear away from my cheek. You sonofabitch, I mouthed but did not say.“Are you sure it’s all me?
— Vee Hoffman
He'd lost the only part of his life that made it worth living because of a couple random fucks. How ridiculous.
— Santino Hassell, Afterimage
Don't complain or blame to others, you are the one who selected wrong person,now get up ,wipe your tears and correct your statistics and now make a wiser choice. Learn to judge people, learn from your master(god,parents,teacher,best friend).
— Nikhil Yadav
Denis's love for Mattia had burned itself out, like a forgotten candle in an empty room, leaving behind a ravenous discontent.
— Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Dating is the best inward and outward sign that you've moved on after a big break.
— Claudia in Baby Proof
You'll make mistakes because it's impossible to know what is or isn't a mistake until it's made.
— Stephenie Meyer, The Chemist
Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive.
— Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi
If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive." -Mother Teresa
— Mother Teresa
You could forgive a lot if somebody was there to take care of things until you grew up.
— Jennifer Crusie, Maybe This Time
When nothing worked, he decided the least he could do was pick the yam bits out of his beard. But even the proved fruitless since the bits seemed to find their way into the deepest recesses of the beard, and the just small enough boy quickly grew squeamish. Judge if you must, but if you've ever had to pick yam bits out of an old man's bushy beard, I'm sure you'd forgive him.
— Jason Carter Eaton, The Facttracker
Those who are difficult to love, are difficult to love because they have gone through difficult things which have made them the way they are. What you need to do is to forgive, what they need is your love.
— Jeanette Coron
She was always the first to love, first to encourage, first to forgive...for everyone but herself.
— Liz  Newman
And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
No one can or will ever feel your pain as much as you. Forgive yourself for the past, seize the gift of the present moment.
— K.J. Kilton
For the past couple of nights when I'd lain down beside her, after she'd called asleep and I knew she couldn't hear me, I'd promised her that she'd never have to forgive me again if she could do it one last time.
— Nicole Jacquelyn, Unbreak My Heart
Forgive and love again.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Any act would be forgiven him, but the act itself would remain; what he would leave in the world would be the shame and hurt he forced upon others. This could not be.
— David  Kirk, Child of Vengeance
Echo slides off the hood, and her hips have this easy sway as she walks to the back passenger door. Damn, she’s gorgeous—red, curly hair flowing over her shoulders, a pair of cut-offs hugging her ass and a blue spaghetti-strap tank dipped low enough to show cleavage.My fingers twitch with the need to touch. I’m going to have to pull some major groveling to gain forgiveness. If I were smart, I’d find a way to say sorry without opening my mouth. Never fails that half the time I try to apologize, it comes out wrong.
— Katie McGarry, Breaking the Rules
We haven’t talked since the café, and he’s dead wrong if he thinks I’m caving. I don’t care how many wicked smiles he flashes in my direction or how many times he “mistakenly” brushes his hand against my cheek or thigh. He can make my head spin and my blood run hot, but I’m strong enough to resist his every temptation.
— Katie McGarry, Breaking the Rules
I wish for you the wisdom to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology.
— Steve Maraboli
We will never forgive and we will never forget.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Accept, forgive and forget. Forgive not only the people who hurt us, but also forgive ourselves, accepting whatever is the outcome, then forget the wrongs, learn from them and move on. Holding on to the guilt and pain would just make life miserable for us.
— Kcat Yarza, KCAT CAN: I have a pen that writes
I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
To be sorry you hurt me is not enough for me to forgive you.
— Adi Alsaid, Never Always Sometimes
We all are the Prisoners of our Mind. Forget & Forgive to Claim your Freedom.
— Deepak Chandra
There must not be any single person in the world whom you should allow to rent a portion of your heart. Don't hold grudge. Forgive and move on...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
I forgive people but that doesn’t mean I accept their behavior or trust them. I forgive them for me, so I can let go and move on with my life.
— forgive
the three major F's of life: FORGIVE, FORGET and move FORWARD
— Manuel Corazzari
Remember, this type doesn’t really believe He’ll forgive them, by repenting they are trying to earn what they do not think, in any case, He will pay.
— Geoffrey Wood
Your failings cannot be so great that you cannot overcome them with faith in our Lord; he forgave me mine, he will forgive you yours. You have but to desire it.
— Roseanna M. White, A Stray Drop of Blood
Restoration and hope is available each time you return to God.
— Jim George
He was not prepared to deal with my mistake, thought Jane, and he did not understand the suffering his response would cause me. He is innocent of wrong -doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and Jane was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out. Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order...She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out.
— Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
Never' is an unquantifiable and unrealistic amount of time.
— Ruth Cardello, Rise of the Billionaire
Show your children God’s love by loving them and others as Christ loves you. Be quick to forgive, don’t hold a grudge, look for what’s best, and speak gently into areas of their lives that need growth.
— Genny Monchamp
Don’t forgive people until they understand their mistakes.
— M.F. Moonzajer
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
— Samuel Johnson
When we forgive, we're saying to our heart that we are ready to move on.
— Milan Ljubincic
Wish for the happiness of your enemies, for if they are happy, they are your enemy no more.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Love is what happens when we forgive. I forgive Connor Evans. A part of me will always love him, but from this day on I won't hate him. Not for one minute. I forgive him because he gave me Max.
— Karen Kingsbury
When we forgive, we're telling our heart that we are ready to move on.
— Milan Ljubincic
Jessamine recoiled from the paper as if it were a snake. "A lady does not read the newspaper. The society pages, perhaps, or the theater news. Not this filth.""But you are not a lady, Jessamine---," Charlotte began."Dear me," said Will. "Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.
— Helen Thomas
The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
— G.K. Chesterton
I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
— Christopher Hitchens
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
— Oscar Wilde
People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.
— Amin Maalouf, The First Century After Beatrice
When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth.
— Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Ketika Jurnalisme Dibungkam Sastra Harus Bicara
The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.
— Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures
The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.
— Nora Ephron, Wallflower at the Orgy
I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
— Matthew Arnold
We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics
—  this is how we stay objective.
What you read in the newspapers, hear on the radio and see on television, is hardly even the truth as seen by experts; it is the wishful thinking of journalists, seen through filters of prejudice and ignorance.
— Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Intelligence: A New Look
...looking back, has this journalism experience been a nightmare for you?''Not entirely.''Did you enjoy any of it?''I liked going to the library,' he says. 'I think I prefer books to people -- primary sources scare me.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.
— Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays
Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi's and Nikes, grab their caps and backpacks, and Sony personal CD players and head for school.
— Naomi Klein, No Logo
They had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
Take away the newspaper—and this country of ours would become a scene of chaos. Without daily assurance of the exact facts—so far as we are able to know and publish them—the public imagination would run riot. Ten days without the daily newspaper and the strong pressure of worry and fear would throw the people of this country into mob hysteria—feeding upon rumors, alarms, terrified by bugbears and illusions. We have become the watchmen of the night and of a troubled day. . . .
— Harry  Chandler
But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.'Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
Reporters trade in pain. It sells papers. Everyone knows that.
— Jonathan Maberry, Dead of Night
I realize that I am not a journalist. So anything I say is not important. 
— Craig Ferguson
He cannot deny a certain relief in being able to sift through academic tomes, fulfilling his journalistic duty without having to barge past security guards at the Arab League or grab man-on-the-street from women at the market. This library work is easily his favorite part of reporting so far.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
...what I'm getting at is like the distinction between tourist and a traveler. The tourist experience is superficial and glancing. The traveler develops a deeper connection with her surroundings. She is more invested in them -- the traveler stays longer, makes her own plans, chooses her own destination, and usually travels alone: solo travel and solo participation, although the most difficult emotionally, seem the most likely to produce a good story.
— Ted Conover
As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists....
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
— Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic
Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn't see journalism as "morally indefensible" was either "too stupid" or "too full of himself," she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I'd never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism - particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures - was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren't talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone.
— Michael Hastings, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan
(aspiring journalist to Carl Kolchak)'Andy knows I want to be a reporter. Like you'This took me by surprise. 'Sallie, my dear, nobody wants to be a reporter like me.
— Elizabeth Massie, Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook
The greatest influence over content was necessity--they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.
— Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.
— Joan Didion
Why, sir, in the beginning we appointed all our worst generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers. As you know, I have planned some campaigns and quite a number of battles. I have given the work all the care and thought I could, and sometimes, when my plans were completed, as far as I could see, they seemed to be perfect. But when I have fought them through, I have discovered defects and occasionally wondered I did not see some of the defects in advance. When it was all over, I found by reading a newspaper that these best editor generals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me until it was too late.” Then, after a pause, he added, with a beautiful, grave expression I can never forget: “I have no ambition but to serve the Confederacy, and do all I can to win our independence. I an willing to serve in any capacity to which the authorities may assign me. I have done the best I could in the field, and have not succeeded as I could wish. I am willing to yield my place to these best generals, and I will do my best for the cause in editing a newspaper.”In the same strain he once remarked to one of his generals: “Even as poor a soldier as I am can generally discover mistakes after it is all over. But if I could only induce these wise gentlemen who see them so clearly beforehand to communicate with me in advance, instead of waiting until the evil has come upon us, to let me know that they knew all the time, it would be far better for my reputation, and (what is of more consequence) far better for the cause.
— Robert E. Lee
Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone.
— Jonah Goldberg
If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one. 
— Arthur Brisbane
The press has the power to stimulate people to clean up the environment prevent nuclear proliferation force crooked politicians out of office reduce poverty provide quality health care  for all people and even to save the lives of millions of people as it did in Ethiopia in 1984. But instead we are using it to promote sex violence and sensationalism and to line the pockets of already wealthy media moguls.’ Dr Carl Jensen founder of Project Censored
— Ian Hargreaves, Journalism: A Very Short Introduction
The working people of the Flint area hated this rag, but it was our only daily so you read it. Everyone called it the "Flint Urinal." Editorially, the paper had historically been on the wrong side of every major social and political issue of the twentieth century -- "the wrong side" meaning: whatever side the union workers were on, the Urinal took the opposite position.
— Michael Moore, Here Comes Trouble
‎Theorists of journalism have long noted parallels to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics: by reporting on something, one subtly but irrevocably changes it.
— Ben Yagoda, The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism
Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.
— Naguib Mahfouz
I think I was always interested in the larger world, even as a kid, and my experiences as a journalist only heightened that interest. Covering conflict, I learned that though leaders often try to create a sense of "us" and "them," the differences are not that delineated. I often felt like it was a whole bunch of "us," with some of "them" scattered around. That made me feel that the borders we draw around ourselves are often artificial.
— Masha Hamilton
It takes a lot of moola to fool around with national magazines, regardless of their politics. It takes even more if the paper is hell bent on shoving a hot poker up the rear end of the Establishment, as that editorial posture is not conducive to a massive influx of advertising dollars...a lot of people on the left still cherish the idea that Ramparts went under because I bought people drinks.
— Warren Hinckle, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade
Verbosity was an established Victorian trait.
— Matthew Engel, Tickle The Public: One Hundred Years Of The Popular Press
How’s work?’ Martin asked. Behrouz was now a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, which these days seemed to mean as much video journalism as prose. ‘Not bad.’ Behrouz smiled slightly. ‘Business people might be the last paying market left for real news. If they’re convinced that they’re getting fearlessly objective information, they’ll keep shelling out for it – while everyone else gives up caring and buries their head inside their favourite consensual reality.’ Martin laughed softly, self-conscious but grateful for a few words of real conversation, a lifeline out of the pit. ‘You’re not a fan of News Five Point Oh, then?’ ‘Don’t get me started. HigherTribe is worse, but they’re all pathological. What isn’t filtered and spun is just invented out of whole cloth.’ ‘Yeah.’ The replacement of journalism by rumour aggregators and group-think salons was a serious matter, but Martin’s enthusiasm for talking shop was already beginning to falter.
— Greg Egan, Zendegi
When moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.
— Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting - though not necessarily true.
— Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists.
— Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Lesson: Never underestimate a woman. Or a chef.
— Gwenda Bond, Triple Threat
The thrill of working in this building, with its iconic globe on top, would never fade.
— Gwenda Bond, Triple Threat
Getting an interview with someone is like asking your good-looking cousin to go out with a friend of a friend on a blind date: you must approach the subject Just So.
— John Brady, The Craft of Interviewing
Looking around me, I saw that all my colleagues were busy at the same task. Eyes were rolled up, mouths hung open, here and there a finger twitched. It had to be either a day trip from the Catatonic Academy, or the modern press at work.
— John Varley, Steel Beach
How well it had suited me, that absolute license to march up to evildoers and demand who, what, where, when and why?
— Chris Cleave, Little Bee
In the heat of the 2000 election, then Governor George W. Bush of Texas made an off-the-cuff statement that we ought to take the log out of our own eye before calling attention to the speck in the eye of our neighbor. The New York Times reported the remark as a minor gaffe -- what it termed "an interesting variation on the saying about the pot and the kettle."The reporter -- actually a fine and balanced journalist -- did not recognize the biblical reference. Neither did his editors. And this, of course, was not an obscure biblical reference. Not only is it found in the red letters of the New Testament, it is taken from the Sermon on the Mount.
— Paul Marshall, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion
In a story on the U.S.-brokered security pact between the government of Sudan and southern rebel groups, the New York Times referred to the war in Sudan as "a pet cause of many American religious conservatives." It is hard to imagine the Times describing the plight of Soviet Jewry as a "pet cause" of American Jews, or opposition to apartheid as a "pet cause" of African-Americans.
— Paul Marshall, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion
If the one who is to get us the news is in chains, the news may get to us but with chains!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
I'm not involved, not involved," I repeated. It has been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action – even an opinion is a kind of action.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
It's always worrying to see a journalist take a sudden interest in what you're saying, especially when you half suspect it was a load of pigeon guano.
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
It's not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news.
— Umberto Eco, Numero zero
(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of monks and spending the rest of your life in a glass monastery - removed from the world of human affairs even as it continued to whirl around you on all sides. To be a journalist meant you could never be the person who tossed the brick through the window that started the revolution. You could only watch the man toss the brick, you could try to understand why he had tossed the brick, you could explain to others what significance the brick had in starting the revolution, but you yourself could never toss the brick or even stand in the mob that was urging the man to throw it.
— Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1
It’s the great flaw of journalism. The more something happens, the less newsworthy it is.
— Nathan  Hill, The Nix
Journalism delivers news, but not necessarily relevance.
— Khang Kijarro Nguyen
He never asked me what I thought, and I never told him what I thought, because in my view that's the way a journalist ought to behave. You ought not to be going around to people volunteering your feelings. That's daily journalism.
— Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer
Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
— Thomas Jefferson
Unlike other relationships that have a purpose beyond themselves and are clearly delineated as such (dentist-patient, lawyer-client, teacher-student), the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose. If everybody put his cards on the table, the game would be over. The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.
— Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer
Like the young Aztec men and women selected for sacrifice, who lived in delightful ease and luxury until the appointed day where their hearts were to be carved from their chests, journalistic subjects know all too well what awaits them when the days of wine and roses — the days of interviews — are over. And still they say yes when a journalist calls, and still they are astonished when they see the flash of the knife.
— Janet Malcolm
In North Korea, journalism, the job of telling the stories power and money do not want told, of giving a voice to the voiceless, does not exist.
— John  Sweeney, North Korea Undercover: Inside the World's Most Secret State
It is not the job of the media to try to skew events but to report on events honestly. Anything else is journalistic malpractice.
— James "Doc" Crabtree
Computer hackers are the true journalists in the 21st Century. The old journalism is worse than dead. It is unreliable to the point that it is nothing more than a nuisance, an obstacle in the pursuit of truth.
— A.E. Samaan
Go and nose out the next piece of shit... as one said in the trade. If nothing else was available, you could run an article on the latest miracle diet. That always worked.
— Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
I was a journalist and I liked to watch. I was in awe.
— Nora Ephron, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections
It is hard for a writer to call an editor great, because it is natural for him to think of the editor as a writer manqué. It is like asking a thief to approve a fence, or a fighter to speak highly of a manager. “Fighters are sincere,” a fellow with the old pug’s syndrome said to me at a bar once as head wobbled and the hand that held his shot glass shook. “Managers are pimps, they sell our blood.” In the newspaper trade, confirmed reporters think confirmed editors are mediocrities who took the easy way out. These attitudes mark an excess of vanity coupled with a lack of imagination; it never occurs to a writer that anybody could have wanted to be anything else.
— A.J. Liebling, Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer
Blogs are assailed on all sides, by the crushing economics of the business, dishonest sources, inhuman deadlines, pageview quotas, inaccurate information, greedy publishers, poor training, the demands of the audience, and so much more. These incentives are real, whether you're at The Huffington Post or some tiny blog. Taken individually, the resulting output is obvious: bad stories, incomplete stories, wrong stories, unimportant stories.
— Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich.
— Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
At a banquet given in his honour Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock once modestly attributed his success in life to the habit of "getting up earlier than the other fellow." But this was partly metaphorical, partly false and in case wholly relative for journalists are as a rule late risers.
— Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job — popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited make them answer a string of damn fool questions when they want to do something else — they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press.
— Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
How can people trust social media over newspapers today?
— Joel Landau, Source Journalism and News Values
The rule of thumb for all news operations is that stories are assigned their importance on the basis of what affects or interests the greatest number of one's readers or viewers. Depending on the nature of the newspaper or broadcast, the balance between what "affects" and what "interests" is quite different. The first criteria of a responsible newspaper such as The New York Times is going to be that which their readers need to know about their world that day — those developments that in one way or another might affect their health, their pocketbooks, the future of themselves and their children. The first criterion of the tabloid is that which "interests" its readers — gossip, sex, scandal.
— Walter Cronkite, A Reporter's Life
Unanimity makes me itchy. It almost always hides a grave. I started digging.
— Ben Ehrenreich, The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
When I take risks now, I do so only when I have to and with every precaution. I used to prospect for news, dropping into places to see what was up. Well, I could go to parts of Libya today and find lots of good stories, but I probably wouldn’t be around to tell them.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
Let's be honest about journalists: We find a lot of ways of being wrong.
— E.J. Dionne Jr.
From seven hundred journalists at the beginning of March, the number had dwindled to about one hundred and fifty—print reporters, TV correspondents, photographers, cameramen, and support personnel. At the press center I encountered Kazem, who only a week before I had asked for help with my visa. “Why are you staying when everyone else is leaving?” he asked. I took a chance and replied in Arabic. Some journalists, I said, are as samid as the Iraqi people. Samid means “steadfast” and “brave” and is the adjective most often used by Iraqis to describe themselves. Kazem laughed and threw his arm around my shoulder.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
Reporters go through four stages in a war zone. In the first stage, you’re Superman, invincible. In the second, you’re aware that things are dangerous and you need to be careful. In the third, you conclude that math and probability are working against you. In the fourth, you know you’re going to die because you’ve played the game too long. I was drifting into stage three.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
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, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
I may have been in stage four, but I wasn’t completely crazy. At least eighty-six journalists had been killed in Iraq, more than in any other conflict since World War II, and another thirty-eight had been taken hostage. More would die in the years to come. I knew I had to limit my movements and take special care when I did go out.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
Trouble seemed to follow me around. The late Tim Russert, my friend and the esteemed moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, once joked, “Richard, just don’t come to Washington.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
I could scarcely believe that my new home was engulfed by war before I even had time to find an apartment. It seemed that war followed me everywhere I went.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
When I came to the Middle East, journalists had a kind of immunity that allowed us to travel freely and meet with militants who hated Israel and the United States. In 2000, when I was working for Agence France-Presse, I didn’t feel fearful when I went to Gaza to meet with Hamas leaders or to the West Bank to speak to Palestinian gunmen. These men didn’t much like me. We didn’t have anything in common. But they felt that they had to treat me with common decency and a modicum of respect because I was a journalist and I was writing about them. They wanted to spin me so that I would give the world their version of events. They were never completely happy, of course, because my pieces didn’t make them look as perfect as they looked to themselves. But they needed to talk to me and other reporters because we were the only way they could get their story out. Now jump ahead to 2006. Zarqawi was on his killing spree in Iraq, and suddenly the Internet had become ubiquitous, and uploading videos on YouTube and other platforms was literally child’s play. So Zarqawi and his henchmen said to themselves, “Why should we let reporters interview us and filter what we say? We can go straight to the Internet and say exactly what we want, for as long as we want to say it, and we can post videos that Western journalists would never show.” Journalists became worthless, at least as megaphones. But we became valuable as commodities to be stolen, bought, and sold, traded for prisoners, or ransomed for millions.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
In 2015, when I went back to the States or to an international conference, I found that people didn’t much care anymore. They saw the Middle East awash in blood, beyond redemption, and didn’t want to read about it or see it on the evening news. They just wanted to keep away from it.
— Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.
— Robert Fisk
In a time when society is drowning in tsunamis of misinformation, it is possible to change the world for the better if we repeat the truth often and loud enough.
— Alberto Cairo, The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication
If you not longer let the community hear all of it's significant voices - you begin to have; a single narrow view of: the problems of the society,of the solutions of society - and you begun soon or later overwhelmed by the society you don't understand.
— Ben Bagdikian
It's great being a journalist, because our office is the world.
— Rebecca Aguilar
Las Vegas, the most expensive toilet in the world that still can’t flush.
— Brin-Jonathan Butler
He turned and gave the Dark Elf a nasty look. “They can do that,” he said, “mess with your head, using arcane mind control techniques. Well-known fact.”The Dark Elf sniggered. “I wish,” he said. “Sadly, no. You’re thinking of journalism, which is slightly different.
— Tom Holt, The Good, the Bad and the Smug
The truth is usually somewhere in the gray turbulent eddies set in motion by the mixture of black and white.
— Ken Poirot
It's one thing to put on your nation's uniform to give your life for your country. But to dress up in black-market khakis and head into battle in a borrowed bush hat, armed only with a Nikon camera, 10 rolls of film and notebook, is definitely another thing.
— Peter Arnett, Flash! The Associated Press Covers the World
The dictator’s black hand hadmade China a birdcage wrapped in red flags.--From "Balloons
— Zoë S. Roy, Butterfly Tears
If you end up with the story you started with, you weren't listening along the way.
— Matt Heineman
The local liberal press, much molested by the censorship, had its courageous and skilful writers such as VM Doroshevich, the master of that semi-literary and semi-journalistic essay at which Bronstein himself was one day to excel.
— Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921
A moment from another world! Imagine a reporter dictating an exclusive story, a lead story, sourced from the President of the United States, from a telephone just off the White House dance floor to the strains of Lester Lanin's dance band.
— Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures
Cherchez la femme" is good advice for investigative reporters. "Follow the money" is even better advice.
— Ben Bradlee
But journalists thrive on not knowing exactly what the future holds. That's part of the excitement. Something interesting, something important, will happen somewhere, as sure as God made sour apples, and a good aggressive newspaper will become part of that something.
— Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures
Mort moved my ending to the beginning, took out all the adjectives, cut the whole thing in half, and made it one hundred percent better.'That's how it's done,' he said. Best writing lesson I ever had.
— Anita Diamant, The Boston Girl
To assure him, Peter Lim decided that the newsroom adopt this approach: it was better to produce the best story than the first story. He had good reason. Finding scoops in a Singapore with many OB markers carried a real risk: the story was sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes had to rely on official spokesmen. But once they knew you were on the story, they either prevailed on the editors to hold it until the time was right to release it, or gave it to every newspaper. The edict went against the grain. No journalist could resist the temptation to be first with the news.
— Cheong Yip Seng, OB Markers: My Straits Times Story
You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways--but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
Do you still think the world is vast? That if there is a conflagration in one place it does not have a bearing on another, and that you can sit it out in peace on your veranda admiring your absurd petunias?
— Anna Politkovskaya
I've always wanted to be a journalist, but what am I going to do? Write articles about which movie star had the fat sucked from her ass and injected into her face? Which professional athlete just confessed to shooting steroids? The last celebrity baby names?" Cara lowered both brows in frustration. "Who cares?
— Melissa Landers, Invaded
Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in journalism.
— Dave Barry
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
— Erwin Knoll
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
— Oscar Wilde
We are drifting into some ugly parallels here, and if I'd written this kind of thing two years ago I'd pick up the New York Times and see myself mangled all over the Op-Ed page... And then beaten into a bloody coma the next evening by some hired thugs in an alley behind the National Press Building.....
— Hunter S. Thompson
It had occurred to her that the ultimate expression of Tom Wolfe’s ‘saturation reporting’ was possibly at hand: the copycat murder of the journalist, with the murderer finishing the piece and filing it, complete with photographs and videos.
— David Cronenberg, Consumed
Now listen,' said George angrily, 'I’ve been in a newspaper office all evening and I know better than you what’s going on.''Nonsense. If there’s one place in the world where nobody knows what’s going on, it’s a newspaper office.
— Jack Iams, The French Touch
Someone was waving a large pink-and-white sign that read, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." I was trying, and so were at least thirty thousand other bodies, with varying degrees of post-Aquarian patience, to see the Who for the first time in a year.
— Ellen Willis
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
— Janet Malcolm
Say what you wish about media in the Arab world, but say it knowing that no media channel in the world is absolutely free.
— Aysha Taryam
In an expansive attempt to establish a foothold among California's intelligentsia and create America's first truly national newspaper, The New York Times launched a slimmed-down West Coast edition in October 1962... The result in LA was a sorry stepsister of the great gray New York Times for its West Coast readers... Reprocessed news dictated from 3,000 miles away by editors who knew zip about what made Southern California tick.
— Dennis McDougal
As the final computerized decade of the twentieth century came into view, time itself seemed to speed up and compress into smaller and smaller bytes, leaving less and less time over the breakfast table to ruminate on the fascinating aboriginal lore from the Australian outback or on the clandestine Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews out of southern Sudan. Readers preferred news that affected their own lives and they wanted it now. Leisure time was a luxury that fewer and fewer times subscribers enjoyed.
— Dennis McDougal, Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty
Upon descending our threaded words on the web by a steep and hazardous precipice of readers requires constant review.
— MsConcerned
I teach my students that you can't be a journalist if you are going to be judgmental. If you have a judgmental nuance as you pose a question, people will close down.
— Robert S. Boynton
How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn't change much.
— Anna Politkovskaya, Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches
These empty pages are your future, soon to become your past. They will read the most personal tale you shall ever find in a book.
— Anonymous
The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels
The byline is a replacement for many other things, not the least of them money. If someone ever does a great psychological profile of journalism as a profession, what will be apparent will be the need for gratification—if not instant, then certainly relatively immediate. Reporters take sustenance from their bylines; they are a reflection of who you are, what you do, and why, to an uncommon degree, you exist. ... A journalist always wonders: If my byline disappears, have I disappeared as well?
— David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
At least a circus performance does not last long, and the regime availing itself of the services of clownish journalists has the longevity of a mouldering mushroom.
— Anna Politkovskaya, Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches
Equal time is not necessary when dealing with evil. Nazis do not merit equal or fair treatment.
— Robert Fisk
Opponents past and present have the same essential weakness about them: first they want to use you, then they want to be you, then they want to snuff you out.
— Julian Assange, Julian Assange - The Unauthorised Autobiography
What matter is the information, not what you think about it.
— Anna Politkovskaya, Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches
The job of a journalist is to amplify the voices of the marginalized. To do that, you have to hear those voices in the first place.
— Allison Kilkenny, #Newsfail: Climate Change, Feminism, Gun Control, and Other Fun Stuff We Talk About Because Nobody Else Will
Most journalists are impatient to get their legwork done and to start the actual writing
— David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask
— James  Cameron
Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story.
— Sidney Zion, Read All About It!: The Collected Adventures of a Maverick Reporter