Quotes by Journalists - Page 126

Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them.
Tahir Shah
If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the "form of funny," which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.
Chuck Klosterman
When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.
Mitch Albom
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
Frank Herbert
Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.
Charlie Jane Anders
For the first time in his life, he felt exactly what he was, and he was not impressed.
Mark Helprin
It's not always a question of you changing your mind. I think very often your mind changes you. You suddenly realise that without having intended to think something, or while intending to think something, you can't quite do it anymore. It doesn't mean the same thing it used to. And you wonder why. And if you want to take an honest exploration of why that is, it may lead you in some alarming but fruitful directions. That's actually why I called this book Hitch-22, because it's a minor-key echo of the great Joe Heller paradox; but in a lifetime that's had quite a lot of commitment in it, and allegiance, I've now reached a point where I'm mainly associated with a group of people who I suppose could be described as adamant for skepticism, or resolve for uncertainty. And this pits us against the people who are completely sure they have all the answers - or modern totalitarians. The ones who have all the information they need, and who indeed have the truth as it's been revealed to them - they're already qualified to tell us what to do. Opposition to that lot is the cause of my life, always has been, in a way, and opposition to all forms of totalitarianism, not just as a system of thought but in the mind.
Christopher Hitchens
Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.As if I were not puzzled at myself!
Walt Whitman
...friendship is something you do.
Nuala O'Faolain
He impressed people. Unconsciously. Some people are like that. I'm not. There's something in those people that breaks down all the barriers, because they act completely the way they are, have nothing to hide, never shelter behind anything, are just themselves, straightforward.
Arnaldur Indriðason
People are always doing things for my sake and strangely enough, I'm the one who suffers for it.
Robert Masello
We stay busy so we don't have to admit we don't have all the answers. After long enough with our constant distractions, we end our search for them. And God. Soon enough, we'll all come to realize we can't be God. We'll settle for telling ourselves we can. Or we'll just make one up.
Brian Krans
By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.
Lev Grossman
At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.
Albert Camus
you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
Ernest Hemingway
The thing is', (Rufus) Stone said, 'that if you don't believe that you are an old man, or a woman, or a tramp, then how can you expect anyone else to believe you? Looking the part is just the surface; being the part is the true disguise.
Andy Lane
If in some radical miracle, the Abrahamic God revealed his existence to the world, I’d accept the belief in the deity — but I still wouldn't worship it. The jealous and angry God that justified the killings of millions, sent plagues upon first borns, and abhorred homosexuals would not be worthy of my worship.
David G. McAfee
Most Christians believe that Jesus IS God, that Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as "an abomination." He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that suggested the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. You have to accept the good along with the bad... after all, he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17).
David G. McAfee
Doesn´t matter who you are or what you believe. Everybody has a ghost story
Robin Parrish
Researchers began finding that habit replacement worked pretty well for many people until the stresses of life—such as finding out your mom has cancer, or your marriage is coming apart—got too high, at which point alcoholics often fell off the wagon. Academics asked why, if habit replacement is so effective, it seemed to fail at such critical moments. And as they dug into alcoholics’ stories to answer that question, they learned that replacement habits only become durable new behaviors when they are accompanied by something else.One group of researchers at the Alcohol Research Group in California, for instance, noticed a pattern in interviews. Over and over again, alcoholics said the same thing: Identifying cues and choosing new routines is important, but without another ingredient, the new habits never fully took hold.The secret, the alcoholics said, was God.
Charles Duhigg
I think people believe what they want to believe.
Mitch Albom
People who believe in buried gods,’ said Louis.‘Do you believe in buried gods, Detective Walsh?’‘I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.
John Connolly
Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it.
Caitlin Moran
People believed what made them comfortable. What fit with their preconceptions of how the world worked.
Robert Ferrigno
Yeah, well, you believe what you want to. I live in the real world.
Robert Ferrigno
No one believes what they're told. They believe what they uncover. What they dig up on their own. And the harder it is to find, the more they believe it when they do find it.
Robert Ferrigno
Rakkim would have loved to believed that… another reason he wasn't convinced.
Robert Ferrigno
God will fight your battles if you just keep still. He is able to carry you through. Trust Him. Keep standing, keep believing and keep hoping.
Germany Kent
Believe nothing. Try everything.
Sally Brampton
Later I read that there are things inside us too tiny to see. Not even a microscope can capture them. This got me thinking--if there are things inside us too tiny to see, might there be things outside us too big to believe?
Rene Denfeld
This was when she asked him whether it was true that love conquered all, as the songs said. 'It is true', he replied, 'but you would do well not to believe it.
Gabriel García Márquez
I just didn't want to be a loser anymore...-Mitsuko Souma
Koushun Takami
Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing.
Gayle Forman
I glory in the emotionally commonplace
Lionel Shriver
Then, all of a sudden, those pea-green lawns where the first scarlet poppies were flowering, those canary-yellow fields which striped the tawny hills sloping down to a sea full of azure glints, all seemed so trivial to me, so banal, so false, so much in contrast with Ayl's person, with Ayl's world, with Ayl's idea of beauty, that I realized her place could never have been out here. And I realized, with grief and fear, that I had remained out here, that I would never again be able to escape those gilded and silvered gleams, those little clouds that turned from pale blue to pink, those green leaves that yellowed every autumn, and that Ayl's perfect world was lost forever, so lost I couldn't even imagine it any more, and nothing was left that could remind me of it, even remotely, nothing except perhaps that cold wall of gray stone.
Italo Calvino
If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress ...
Gary Webb
We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king's horses and all these king's men cannot put us back together again
Gale Forman
I asked Raghav, as we were looking over the wasteland, if the Muslims they burnt would beg for their lives. "Yes they would say, Have mercy on us. But we were filled with such hate; we had Radhabi Chawl on our minds. And even if there was one who said, Let him go, there would be ten others saying, No kill him. And so we had to kill him. "But what if he was innocent?"Raghav looked at me. "His biggest crime was that he was Muslim.
Suketu Mehta
...I was there when we opened the gates. Some of these poor wretches running out were so emaciated they actually died from the excitement of being liberated. I saw it happen several times. These people in the camps – they were like walking skeletons. You could see all their bones. The gates opened and the people ran out yelling, "I'm free! I'm free!" And some of them died right there. I was horrified to see what the SS had done to these people. - Roy Gates
Marcus Brotherton
We climbed under the chain fence and knelt around Dad while he petted the cheetah. By then a few people had begun to gather. One man was calling to us to get back behind the chain fence. We ignored him. I knelt close to the cheetah. My heart was beating fast, but I wasn’t scared, only excited. I could feel the cheetah’s hot breath on my face. He looked right at me. His amber eyes were steady but sad, as if he knew he’d never see the plains of Africa again.
Jeannette Walls (Author)
When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.Laura Miller - Butterfly Weeds
Laura Miller
This is not a book about race, though the disproportionate number of those who fell that day were black, and certain racial themes are unavoidable. It is not a book that sets out to compare the United States unfavorably with Britain, though it is written by a Briton to whom gun culture is alien. Finally, it is not a book about gun control; it is a book made possible by the absence of gun control.
Gary Younge
I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will Traynor that he had a reason to live.
Jojo Moyes
I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.
Lionel Shriver
If our minds can hold us back, then they can push us forwards too.
Sally Brampton
When your mind is rich in the wisdom, and your heart is sensitive and filled with love, you are a person, who can change the world.
Ehsan Sehgal
The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. Language is about subtlety and nuance. It is power and it is potent. We can woo with words and we can wound. Despots fear the words of the articulate opponent. Successful revolutions are achieved with words as much as with weapons.
John Humphrys
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
George Orwell
...you do violence with your words if you force them - art is given - the words received, moment by moment from unseen hands - call it a Muse ...
John Geddes
...language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset...
John Geddes
My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid.
Gil Asakawa
Have you heard," he said "that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? But-" He paused as though to make sure she was paying attention. "But if you know fewer than five, they owe you not even a sip of water."She nodded, understanding his point, but he pressed it."Learn those five phrases, Miss Sweeney," he said.
Masha Hamilton
He walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation. I learned to shape my mouth to the words—sasumuneash for cranberry, tunockuquas for frog. So many things grew and lived here that were strange to us, because they had not been in England. We named the things of this place in reference to things that were not of this place—cat briar for the thickets of vine whose thorns were narrow and claw-like; lambskill for the low-growing laurel that had proved poisonous to some of our hard-got tegs. But there had been no cats or lambs here until we brought them. So when he named a plant or a creature, I felt that I heard the true name of the thing for the first time.
Geraldine Brooks
its badness is so potent that it seems to undermine the very idea of literature, to expose the whole endeavour of making art out of language as essentially and irredeemably fraudulent
Mark O'Connell
But doesn't add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.
Roy Peter Clark
Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys.
Roy Peter Clark
In many ways, religion comes from the same place in us that art comes from. The language of the human heart if poetry
Krista Tippett
Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter.
Patrick Cockburn
The unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force has created languages to limit human thought. That writers are overrated fools. That all religions come from ancient comic writers. And the ultimate goal of comics is same as the purpose of humanity – to break free from language.
Manu Joseph
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found the time to conquer the world.
Heinrich Heine