Quotes by Journalists - Page 70

The author jokes that the culture at his first job at Entertainment Weekly chased away the worthwhile aspects of his Brown education, but in so doing he makes a subtle point about the profound impact of the culture with which we surround ourselves and how easily we can be defined and constrained by our jobs.
A.J. Jacobs
Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability - a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.
Krista Tippett
I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres.
Jon Ronson
The days on which one has been the most inquisitive are among the days on which one has been happiest.
Robert Lynd
Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant! -Erik in The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux
Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.
Ian Fleming
Vengeance is a delicious fruit, which must be allowed to ripen in order that it may be fully enjoyed.
Émile Gaboriau
-I'm going to heaven! I replied.-What do you mean, you're going to heaven?-Let me pass.-And what will you do in heaven, my poor child?-I'm going there to kill God, who killed Daddy.
Tom Reiss
You're going to get a present from me so you'll always remember our agreement."She gave him a crooked smile and climbed on to the bed and knelt between his legs. Bjurman had no idea what she intended to do, but he felt a sudden terror.Then he saw the needle in her hand.He flopped his head back and forth and tried to twist his body away until she put a knee on his crotch and pressed down in warning."Lie rather still because this is the first time I've used this equipment.
Stieg Larsson
Hatred bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Amanda Craig
I've decided that I'm going to collect as many spiders in a jar as I can and then pour them all over you, William Flecter. Seeing as how it's good to face your fears.
Sharon Biggs Waller
Revenge is like politics, one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.
Jonas Jonasson
Her body was spattered with tiny bits of the reverend’s flesh and blood, like someone had combined shrimp and tomato soup and then forgot to put the lid on the blender.
Chelsea Cain
Robbins had opened Gabby up. Her charred skin was peeled back, and her ribs were removed. She was pink inside, like steak that had been burned on a high heat but remained raw in the middle.
Chelsea Cain
His youth was a wingless Dodo.
Lawrence Osborne
Why did you shoot him?""You weren't around," I replied, my teeth gritted in pain. "If you'd been here I'd have shot you instead.
John Connolly
Ugly people kill people all the time. But when pretty people did, it got attention.
Chelsea Cain
I may not be perfect, but God knows I'm trying . . . and God knowing should count for something.
Karen E. Quinones Miller
Lending books to other people is merely a shrewd form of housecleaning.
Joe Queenan
Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?
Frank Herbert
Stupidity has a knack for getting its way.
Albert Camus
If you don't think you have enough problems, you should acquire a mammal in Sweden just hours before you're about to fly home to the other side of the world, and then insist that the animal must come along in your luggage.
Jonas Jonasson
Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You’re twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you’d have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth
Isaac Babel
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flamethrower.
Bruce Feirstein
Join us B+ people! Life is not neat and tidy, but we always manage to get the job done!
Tracey Kidder
Said Opie Read to E.P. Roe,"How do you like Gaboriau?""I like him very much indeed!"Said E.P. Roe to Opie Read.
Julian Street
F***ing triffids.
Scott B. Pruden
It's all right, darling. I'll finish the financial report on my own. I can think clearly before sex and stay awake afterwards. That's one of the nice things about being a woman.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Danger, like a third man, was standing in the room.
Ian Fleming
But sometimes they all craved a little bit of danger, of excitement, of meaning, even if only to reinforce how very comfortable and secure their lives really were.
Gemma Malley
I'd never really believed in terrorists before--I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me--starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia--that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
Cory Doctorow
Nothing is more dangerous than a place of safety.
Robert Ferrigno
Just as well then that kings did not grow old.
Edoardo Albert
The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand.
Frank Herbert
The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
Tahir Shah
In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.
Tahir Shah
As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.
Tahir Shah
...Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.
Ian Fleming
You will be surprised how much punishment the human body can take, if there is enough will - or faith.
F. Sionil Jose'
The Church says: the body is a sin.Science says: the body is a machine.Advertising says: The body is a business.The Body says: I am a fiesta.
Eduardo Galeano
I would rather have nothing than something that was only alright.
Dorothy Koomson
A person's value is attached to a variable exponent.
David Bajo
I was used to sleeping with people because I endlessly found myself in identical situations where it was easier to just fuck them than to say no.
Marya Hornbacher
...Mankind is not a race of noble savages - but primitive monsters hide inside us, elusive as Sasquatch...
John Geddes
Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he’s born until the moment he dies, he’s always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats, whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods, And the wood from which I’m made, since I’m a man, what use will it be put to, since I’m Your son, You will be the spoon I shall dip into humanity and bring out laden with men who shall believe in the new god I intend to become, Laden with men You will devour, There’s no need for Me to devour those who devour themselves.
José Saramago
Everyone wants to save Man, but no one wants to know about men.
José Saramago
There is only one class of men, the privileged class
Albert Camus
Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.
Jeannette Walls
Believers often forget that most atheists used to be religious, that many non-believers used to think they had a personal relationship with their God and they used to 'feel' the power of prayer. They've since learned that it was all a farce, that their feelings were internal emotions and not some external force.
David G. McAfee
Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
Dorothy Day
I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn’t have met, and who didn’t like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. And as I spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful of what Will had said. I told him something good...
Jojo Moyes
I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought anything might happen if I wasn't vigilant. I didn't eat. I didn't go out. I didn't want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And life...well, gradually became livable again.
Jojo Moyes
But this you must know: the violent murder of a mother- when a boy is at the tender age, when he is just discovering girls- it is a terrible thing. confusingly mixed up with all the things feminine, it leaves a charred residue on the soul, like the black marks found at the bottom of a burned pot. no matter how much you scrub and scrub the pot bottom with steel wool and cleansers, the scars, they are permanent
Richard C. Morais
Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell’s argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world’s ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil.
Andrew Nikiforuk
Some mistakes... just have greater consequences than others. But you don't have to let that night be the thing that defines you.
Jojo Moyes
Energy was the ruling theme of Victorian science, as machines increasingly harnessed the forces of nature to do man's work. The concept is also present in the art and literature of the age, notably in the poems of William Blake. The Romantic movement was much interested in energy and its various transformations.
Jeremy Campbell
His captivating speech came not from his grammar or vocabulary but from the joy he took in wielding them well.
Robert Lane Greene
...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant...
Gary Taubes
He was bright, bright, bright, like a lantern above a pub door in November- he made you want to come in and never leave.
Caitlin Moran
This realization leads to a different question than that suggested by all these tips on simplifying the holidays. Namely, what are you saving your energy for? This is all there is. Anything could happen and you are not guaranteed another snowman. So make a fuss. Make a show. Spend your energy now.
Laura Vanderkam