Journalist Quotes

Nixon, who spent much of his career attacking the press and saying he was a victim of the press, was in fact created by the press, in this case the L.A. Times.

If you're a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.

Memory is often less about the truth than about what we want it to be.

Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

When I say something untrue on the air, I mean for it to be transparently untrue. I assume people know when I'm just saying something for effect. Or to be funny.

We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.

One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.

Just when did I get to the point when staying at a hotel wasn't fun?

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.

In some theoretical way I know that a half-million people hear the show. But in a day-to-day way, there's not much evidence of it.

I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot.

I suppose I shouldn't go around admitting I speak untruths on the radio.

But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake.

But sadly, one of the problems with being on public radio is that people tend to think you're being sincere all the time.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

When we got down from the ambulances there were sharp cracks about us as bursts of shrapnel splashed down upon the Town Hall square. Dead soldiers lay outside and I glanced at them coldly. We were in search of the living.

We who go out to die shall be remembered, because we gave the world peace. That will be our reward, though we will know nothing of it, but lie rotting in the earth - dead.

It's better to give than to lend and it costs about the same.

It was so quiet that morning in Paris that the heels of my two companions and myself were loud on the deserted pavements. It was a city of shuttered shops, and barred windows, and deserted avenues.

It was announced as a French victory by the French Minister of War. I did not see any sign of victory but only the retreat of the French forces engaged in the battle.

It is better to give then to lend, and it costs about the same.

In front of us was not a line but a fortress position, twenty miles deep, entrenched and fortified, defended by masses of machine-gun posts and thousands of guns in a wide arc. No chance for cavalry!

I am going to fight - I, a socialist and Syndicalist - so that we shall make an end to war, so that the little ones of France will sleep in peace, and the women go without fear.

From each one of them rose separate columns of smoke, meeting in a pall overhead, and through the smoke came stabbing flashes of fire as German shells burst with thudding shocks of sound. This was the front line of battle.

But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting.

But do you know, I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur. And why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans who have put this war on us.

All was well, until I reached the port of Havre. Three officers with the rank of lieutenant, whom afterwards I knew to be Scotland Yard men, came aboard and demanded to see my papers which they took away from me.

A friend in the War Office warned me that I was in Kitchener's black books, and that orders had been given for my arrest next time I appeared in France.

During the early months of the war in 1914 there was a conflict of opinion between the War Office and the Foreign Office regarding news from the Front.

The one problem with the Internet for journalists who like doing long form is that any story that's going to involve 16 screens on the web page... that's asking a lot of people.