Quotes by Journalists - Page 63

My mother may no longer be (if she ever was) a mast to which I can rope myself. But I fear the loss of Lesley. Without her observance, and her sturdy presence, I would feel windblown.
Trevor Cole
[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.
Christopher Hitchens
To Polyakov it was as though a fierce wind from downstream was sweeping up the Volga. Several times he was knocked off his feet; he fell to the ground no longer knowing what world he lived in, whether he was old or young, what was up and what was down. But Klimov dragged him along and finally they slid to the bottom of a huge crater. Here the darkness was threefold: the darkness of night, the darkness of dust and smoke, the darkness of a deep pit.They lay there beside one another; the same soft light, the same prayer for life filled both their heads. It was the same light, the same touching hope that glows in all heads and all hearts – in those of birds and animals as well as in those of human beings.
Vasily Grossman
Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
He didn't realize that simply by mingling among various lunch tables, he was befriending people in different crowds, weaving together the fringes of the cafeteria.
Alexandra Robbins
He extended his hand, and one by one, everyone put their hands on top of his as a show of unity.
Mark Shaw
The 1970s, fewer than 25% of US residents lived in counties in which the presidential candidate won by landslide. 30 years later, that percentage has nearly doubled.
Alexandra Robbins
It is in unity that we find strength, in unity we find hope, and in unity we can stand firm as the darkness approaches. Let us stand together – and stand firm – against the many faces of hate.
Nick Lowles
There will be sadness," Alia intoned. "I remind you that all things are but beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity.
Frank Herbert
As long as our voiced were in harmony, it didn't matter that our accents were at war.
Carsten Jensen
Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.
Margaret Fuller
My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
Karl Kraus
Me to characters: talk to me people.
Buffy Andrews
Good editors are priceless.
Buffy Andrews
If I write as well as I golf, I'm in trouble!
Buffy Andrews
Show me the contract.
Buffy Andrews
A tweet a day keeps writer's block away.
Buffy Andrews
A cliffhanger is when ...
Buffy Andrews
Climax: It's all downhill from here.
Buffy Andrews
Writer. Another word for poor.
Buffy Andrews
Write on!
Buffy Andrews
The power of the delete key.
Buffy Andrews
I don’t do math.
Buffy Andrews
I'm trying to give my character voice but he won't speak.
Buffy Andrews
Conflict. Conflict. Where art thou conflict?
Buffy Andrews
Rejection. Rejection. You can't handle rejection!
Buffy Andrews
Hey Revision. You can be a pain but you do make Book better.
Buffy Andrews
If you see it in Strunk and White it's so.
Buffy Andrews
I'm in love with writing, but sometimes I swear it hates me.
Buffy Andrews
Sometimes the writing just comes and we're like, oh yeah. Gotta love when that happens.
Buffy Andrews
A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists.
Ernest Hemingway
As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven by internecine battles and eluding the control of its founder, Ermes Marana, has broken into two groups: a sect of enlightened followers of the Archangel of Light and a sect of nihilist followers of the Archon of Shadow. The former are convinced that among the false books flooding the world they can track down the few that bear a truth perhaps extrahuman or extraterrestrial. The latter believe that only counterfeiting, mystification, intentional falsehood can represent absolute value in a book, a truth not contaminated by the dominant pseudo truths.
Italo Calvino
I don’t think there’s a less elitist thing on earth to do than to try and reach out and connect with another human being . . . And that’s what the best writing does, that’s what art does. It looks a reader in the eye, and it proceeds honestly with that reader, and nakedly. There is a compact there, a bond, a relationship, a union, a symbiosis . . . It’s not about you. Whether you’re a genius or an idiot savant. It’s about the work. The work is more important than you. So it’s not about back-claps and plaudits and “isn’t that author smart.” It’s about, “this book really connected with me. And even though you, my friend, are very different from me, I’m lending it to you, because I think it will connect with you as well.” Community. Across the eras. Between people who have never met, who will never meet, who are nonetheless bound in something together, in different ways.
Colin Fleming
Art uses truth and beauty—both of which can be quite ugly, even as that ugliness is transcended—to foster change, growth, love, perception, friendship. Something that doesn’t do that can be great. But I wouldn’t call it art […]
Colin Fleming
I don’t so much hope that any reader “agrees” with me, as I hope to haunt them, to trouble their sense of how things actually are.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.
Ernest Hemingway
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
Joan Didion
I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.
Hunter S. Thompson
I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything.
Drew Magary
the word dyting is not synonymous with the word useless
Mitch Albom
Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.
Carsten Jensen
To do more, is not necessarily to do better.
Katy Butler
Spring had been the season for dying in the old days. Invalids who had struggled through the dark comfort of winter took fright as the night receded.
Mavis Gallant
...the existential paradox we all experience; we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die.
Calvin Trillin
All of these people, it was as if they were all turning to gold, all marked with an invisible X on their foreheads, as of course we are, too, the place and time yet to be determined. Yes, we are burning down; time is disintegrating.
Michael Paterniti
Here's the thing," he said. "People see me as a bridge. I'm not as alive as I used to be, but I'm not yet dead. I'm sort of...in-between
Mitch Albom
Ted," he said, "when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?" I decided I'm going to live-or at least try to live-the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.
Mitch Albom
But everyone knows someone who has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about dying?'Because,' Morrie continued, 'most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.'And facing death changes all that?'Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.'He sighed. 'Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.
Mitch Albom
At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.
Gabriel García Márquez
He nodded toward the window with the sunshine streaming in. "You see that? You can go out there, outside, anytime. You can run up and down the block and go crazy. I can't do that. I can't go out. I can't run. I can't be out there without fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do.
Mitch Albom from "Tuesdays with Morrie"
I'm on the last great journey here--and people ant me to tell them what to pack.
Mitch Albom from "Tuesdays with Morrie"
Don't worry, I plan on living a long time.""Why are you making a bucket list, then?""Because if you wait until you're really dying, it's too late.
Gayle Forman
Back then everyone was saying: "We're going to die, we're going to die. By the year 2000, there won't be any Belarussians left.
Svetlana Alexievich
Sometimes the fog in his eyes would clear, that fog caused by the pain and the killers of pain, and when it cleared, I saw regret and fear in those eyes swimming with tears and I was convinced that this was it, this was the end, this was surely the end.
Tony Parsons
A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.
Mitch Albom
He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems - the way they had always.. because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener.
Mitch Albom
For all that was happening to him, his voice was strong and inviting, and his mind was vibrating with a million thoughts. He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless'.
Mitch Albom
I always had understood that dying of love was mere poetic license.
Gabriel García Márquez
I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.
Gayle Forman
It felt like one of those movies where a bunch of misfits, each gifted in his own way - one in explosives, another in disguise, another in forgery or karate- are thrown together to achieve a dangerous mission.
Philip Delves Broughton