“
The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands.
”
”
Carolyn Forché (The Country Between Us: The Achingly Sensual Political Poetry from a Journalist in El Salvador)
“
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
”
”
Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist – A Greenwich Village Journalist's Conversion and Commitment to Peace and Justice)
“
A woman has but two loves in life: the one who broke her heart and the one she spends the rest of her life with."
- Carolyn Chase, former Broadcast Journalist and heroine Kate Theodore's mother
”
”
Liz Newman
“
Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.
”
”
Tina Brown
“
The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
“
Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
“
I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.
”
”
H.L. Mencken (Prejudices: First Series)
“
Nothing remains. The destruction is complete: love, lives, families, friends, cities, homes – all gone now. All our efforts to be good, to do the right thing, to act well, to be just and generous are now for naught. Because juxtaposed against any hope for fairness is wickedness, pure and simple. In some abstract formulation these things may exist in equal measure, which is to say that the scales balance when taking all things into consideration. But that is fantasy, the stuff of religion, hope beyond all reason. Because for those caught in the whirlwind, in the chaos of manifest evil, despair is all there is. Civilization falls away: everything is pointless now. Survival requires reciprocity. What then if there is none?
”
”
John Payton Foden (Magenta)
“
Why is it so important to have fun? Because if you love your work (or your activism or your family time), then you’ll want to do more of it. You’ll think about it before you go to sleep and as soon as you wake up; your mind is always in gear. When you’re that engaged, you’ll run circles around other people even if they are more naturally talented. From what we’ve seen personally, the best predictor of success among young economists and journalists is whether they absolutely love what they do. If they approach their job like—well, a job—they aren’t likely to thrive. But if they’ve somehow convinced themselves that running regressions or interviewing strangers is the funnest thing in the world, you know they have a shot.
”
”
Steven D. Levitt (Think Like a Freak)
“
God didn’t let Job suffer because he lacked love, but because he did love, in order to bring Job to the point of encountering God face to face, which is humanity’s supreme happiness. Job’s suffering hollowed out a big space in him so that God and joy could fill it.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity)
“
Eric Seven does not believe in love at first sight.
He corrects himself.
Even in that moment, the moment that it happens, he fees his journalist’s brain make a correction, rubbing out a long-held belief, writing a new one in its place.
He did not believe in love at first sight. He thinks he might do so now.
”
”
Marcus Sedgwick (Midwinterblood)
“
Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot – "Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots." And I thought, exactly. That’s the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.
It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.
”
”
Daniel C. Dennett
“
American journalist: If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American journalist: To a young girl?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American journalist: To a child?
Edith Piaf: Love.
”
”
Édith Piaf
“
Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that... Marlene Sanders... once gave this piece of advice to a younger journalist: "Never apologize for working. You love what you do, and loving what you do is a great gift to give to your child.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
“
I was going to post something on Facebook until I asked myself why. David E Love, Journalist
”
”
David E Love
“
British journalists tend to believe that people who become good at something do so because they seek fame and fortune. This is because these are the sole motives of people who become British journalists. But some people, operating at higher levels of mental health, pursue activities because they actually love them.
”
”
John Cleese (So, Anyway...: The Autobiography)
“
Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books." That, for instance, Mann's asinine "Death in Venice," or Pasternak's melodramatic, vilely written "Dr. Zhivago," or Faulkner's corn-cobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces" or at least what journalists term "great books," is to me the sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair. My greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose are, in this order: Joyce's "Ulysses"; Kafka's "Transformation"; Bely's "St. Petersburg," and the first half of Proust's fairy tale, "In Search of Lost Time.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions)
“
Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: “Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?” She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. “Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
“
Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead.
”
”
Ian Fleming (From Russia with Love (James Bond, #5))
“
Journalists can sound grandiose when they talk about their profession. Some of us are adrenaline junkies; some of us are escapists; some of us do wreck our personal lives and hurt those who love us most. This work can destroy people. I have seen so many friends and colleagues become unrecognizable from trauma: short-tempered, sleepless, and alienated from friends. But after years of witnessing so much suffering in the world, we find it hard to acknowledge that lucky, free, prosperous people like us might be suffering, too. We feel more comfortable in the darkest places than we do back home, where life seems too simple and too easy. We don’t listen to that inner voice that says it is time to take a break from documenting other people’s lives and start building our own. Under it all, however, are the things that sustain us and bring us together: the privilege of witnessing things that others do not; an idealistic belief that a photograph might affect people’s souls; the thrill of creating art and contributing to the world’s database of knowledge. When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult. But when I am doing my work, I am alive and I am me. It’s what I do. I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.
”
”
Lynsey Addario (It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War)
“
As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
“
So tel me, Mr. Science Journalist, do you still doubt the existence of miracles?"
"I just told you. You're my miracle.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (True Believer (Jeremy Marsh & Lexie Darnell, #1))
“
The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers . . . The borders are open, folks! Come on in.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (The Cost of Living)
“
But C. S. Lewis made the point that we hate sin but love the sinner all the time — in our own lives. In other words, when we’re judging ourselves, we always love the sinner despite our sin. We accept ourselves, even though we might not always like our behavior.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
“
I'd call it a brilliant success. All those journalists are going to be so disappointed when they find out they missed it."
"They'll still have plenty to report on still. They don't need to intrude on Wolf and Scarlet's privacy anymore in order to do it."
"Are you going to hold a press conference in place of the wedding in a couple of days? Tell the world about your first foray into matrimonial officiating? Wax poetic about the historical importance of such a union?"
He turned his head and smirked down at her. "Nope. But I might tell them what an honor it was for me to be able to marry two of my closest friends, who happen to love each other very much."
Her grin widened. "That won't satisfy them at all."
"I know. That's half the appeal.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
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)
“
...That is my biography from the first day of my chess life to the present.
JOURNALIST. And your plans.
PLAYER. To play!
”
”
Mikhail Tal (The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal)
“
For love: a poet. For romance: a journalist.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
Loving a single person wholeheartedly is like putting all the eggs in one basket
”
”
M.F. Moonzajer (The Journalist: Attack on the Central Intelligence Agency)
“
A correspondence is a kind of love affair.
”
”
Janet Malcolm (The Journalist and the Murderer)
“
What will happen if our labor is no longer needed? If jobs for warehouse workers, garbage collectors, doctors, lawyers, and journalists are displaced by technology?
”
”
John Markoff (Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots)
“
Mother Teresa was once asked by a journalist why she does what she does, that is, how she is able to take the dying poor from the streets of Calcutta, nurse and love them. Her response reflected her deep self-knowledge: “I realized a long time ago that I had a Hitler within me.”2 This realization became the basis of her self-transcendence and of her unique holiness.
”
”
Wayne Teasdale (The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions)
“
In response to suspected leaks to the press about Vietnam, Kissinger had ordered FBI wiretaps in 1969 on the telephones of 17 journalists and White House aides, without court approval. Many news stories based on the purported leaks questioned progress in the American war effort, further fueling the antiwar movement. In a tape from the Oval Office on February 22, 1971, Nixon said, “In the short run, it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, to run this war in a dictatorial way, kill all the reporters and carry on the war.” “The press is your enemy,” Nixon explained five days later in a meeting with Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to another tape. “Enemies. Understand that? . . . Now, never act that way . . . give them a drink, you know, treat them nice, you just love it, you’re trying to be helpful. But don’t help the bastards. Ever. Because they’re trying to stick the knife right in our groin.
”
”
Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men)
“
Now I want you to remember something because I don't think we shall meet again very soon. It is this; however fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, think and live fashionably; virtue and honour will not be banished from the world, however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed, self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honour will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so. In short, Davey, God is not dead. And I can assure you God is not mocked.
”
”
Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
“
I love this book. When other U.S. reporters were licking Ken Lay's loafers, Leopold went for Enron's thieving throat. Leopold is a journalist who insists on real investigative reporting–inside documents, inside sources, hard knife-in-the-gut evidence–detective-style reporting that is just about illegal in the U.S.A. Bravo and my personal Pulitzer to Jason Leopold. Every journalist in America should read this, then quit or riot.
”
”
Greg Palast
“
Years ago, after the publication of my third book, a journalist once asked me if you could tell right away whether a student had a mind for law or not, and the answer is: Sometimes. But often, you’re wrong—the student who seemed so bright in the first half of the semester becomes steadily less so as the year goes on, and the student about whom you never thought one thing or another is the one who emerges as a dazzler, someone you love hearing think.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
Justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. There will come a day when God will settle accounts and people will be held responsible for the evil they’ve perpetrated and the suffering they’ve caused. Criticizing God for not doing it right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. God will bring accountability at the right time—in fact, the Bible says one reason he’s delaying is because some people are still following the clues and have yet to find him.15 He’s actually delaying the consummation of history out of his great love for them.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity)
“
Nobody dreams of becoming a surf journalist. I fantasized about being a marine biologist when I was eight years old, before it became clear to everyone, including me, that I was not mentally equipped to deal with observable facts and shit.
”
”
Chas Smith (Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing's Greatest Love Affair)
“
Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and journalists traveling under second identities), I was handed that day's edition of the Pyongyang Times. At first glance it seemed too laughable for words: endless pictures of the 'Dear Leader'—Little Boy's exalted title—as he was garlanded by adoring schoolchildren and heroic tractor drivers. Yet even in these turgid pages there were nuggets: a telegram congratulating the winner of the Serbian elections; a candid reference to the 'hardship period' through which the country had been passing; an assurance that a certain nuclear power plant would be closed as part of a deal with Washington. Tiny cracks, to be sure. But a complete and rigid edifice cannot afford fissures, however small. There appear to be no hookers, as yet, in Pyongyang. Yet if casinos come, can working girls be far behind? One perhaps ought not to wish for hookers, but there are circumstances when corruption is the only hope.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays)
“
I resist racists, not intergrationists.
I resist seditionists, not abolitionists.
I resist propagandists, not journalists.
I resist extortionists, not opportunists.
I resist chauvinists, not feminists.
I embrace activists, not extremists.
I embrace nationalists, not terrorists.
I embrace intergrationists, not racists.
I embrace lobbyists, not imperialists.
I embrace conservationists, not depletionists.
I believe in liberty, not censorship.
I believe in justice, not oppression.
I believe in equality, not discrimination.
I believe in unity, not conformity.
I believe in freedom, not tyranny.
I believe in democracy, not despotism.
I believe in desegregation, not racism.
I believe in fairness, not tribalism.
I believe in impartiality, not classism.
I believe in emancipation, not sexism.
I believe in truth, not lies.
I believe in charity, not greed.
I believe in peace, not strife.
I believe in harmony, not conflict.
I believe in love, not hatred.
I am a conformist and a futurist.
I am a traditionalist and a modernist.
I am a fundamentalist and a liberalist.
I am an optimist and a pessimist.
I am an idealist and a realist.
I am a theorist and a pragmatist.
I am an industrialist and a philanthropist.
I am an anarchist and a pacifist.
I am a collectivist and an individualist.
I am a capitalist and a socialist.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
The Gap Instinct The gap instinct is very strong. The first time I lectured to the staff of the World Bank was in 1999. I told them the labels “developing” and “developed” were no longer valid and I swallowed my sword. It took the World Bank 17 years and 14 more of my lectures before it finally announced publicly that it was dropping the terms “developing” and “developed” and would from now on divide the world into four income groups. The UN and most other global organizations have still not made this change. So why is the misconception of a gap between the rich and the poor so hard to change? I think this is because human beings have a strong dramatic instinct toward binary thinking, a basic urge to divide things into two distinct groups, with nothing but an empty gap in between. We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, and we do it without thinking, all the time. Journalists know this. They set up their narratives as conflicts between two opposing people, views, or groups. They prefer stories of extreme poverty and billionaires to stories about the vast majority of people slowly dragging themselves toward better lives. Journalists are storytellers. So are people who produce documentaries and movies.
”
”
Hans Rosling (Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think)
“
If God so precisely and carefully and lovingly and amazingly constructed a mind-boggling habitat for His creatures, then it would be natural for Him to want them to explore it, to measure it, to investigate it, to appreciate it, to be inspired by it--and ultimately, and most importantly, to find Him through it.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God)
“
It must be hard to switch from Doris Day to Roger Vadim,” journalist Bob Colacello suggested to Hudson when they chatted for Andy Warhol’s Interview. “That’s the fun of it,” Rock responded. “Ideally, I’d like to do a drama, a comedy, a western, a love story, a musical . . . I’ve tried every way I know to diversify.
”
”
Mark Griffin (All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson)
“
...the presence of others has become even more intolerable to me, their conversation most of all. Oh, how it all annoys and exasperates me: their attitudes, their manners, their whole way of being! The people of my world, all my unhappy peers, have come to irritate, oppress and sadden me with their noisy and empty chatter, their monstrous and boundless vanity, their even more monstrous egotism, their club gossip... the endless repetition of opinions already formed and judgments already made; the automatic vomiting forth of articles read in those morning papers which are the recognised outlet of the hopeless wilderness of their ideas; the eternal daily meal of overfamiliar cliches concerning racing stables and the stalls of fillies of the human variety... the hutches of the 'petites femmes' - another worn out phrase in the dirty usury of shapeless expression!
Oh my contemporaries, my dear contemporaries...
Their idiotic self-satisfaction; their fat and full-blown self-sufficiency: the stupid display of their good fortune; the clink of fifty- and a hundred-franc coins forever sounding out their financial prowess, according their own reckoning; their hen-like clucking and their pig-like grunting, as they pronounce the names of certain women; the obesity of their minds, the obscenity of their eyes, and the toneless-ness of their laughter! They are, in truth, handsome puppets of amour, with all the exhausted despondency of their gestures and the slackness of their chic...
Chic! A hideous word, which fits their manner like a new glove: as dejected as undertakers' mutes, as full-blown as Falstaff...
Oh my contemporaries: the ceusses of my circle, to put it in their own ignoble argot. They have all welcomed the moneylenders into their homes, and have been recruited as their clients, and they have likewise played host to the fat journalists who milk their conversations for the society columns. How I hate them; how I execrate them; how I would love to devour them liver and lights - and how well I understand the Anarchists and their bombs!
”
”
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur de Phocas)
“
Naomi Wolfe, journalist and author of The Beauty Myth, writes, “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in history. A quietly mad population is a tractable one.”31 Wolfe strategically illustrates how body-shame social messaging is used as a means of controlling and centralizing political power. We need look no further than the 2016 U.S. presidential election to see Wolfe’s thesis in action. Candidate Hillary Clinton was exhaustingly scrutinized about her aesthetic presentation. Outfits, makeup, hairstyles were all fodder for the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Even the pro-Hillary, hundred-thousand-plus-member Facebook group Pantsuit Nation chose her penchant for eschewing skirts and dresses as the name of their collective, inadvertently directing public focus to her physical appearance rather than her decades of political experience.
”
”
Sonya Renee Taylor (The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love)
“
The trash-talkers are the most annoying to me, aiming all kinds of barbs at journalists, the government, the “woke” culture, the state of California, and particularly San Francisco, where most of them made their fortunes. They position themselves as populist truth-tellers to their legions of stans. I don’t know about you, but it’s funny to see the world’s richest men urging people to stick it to the man, when they are the man. They are, as often as not, inaccurate and couldn’t care less.
”
”
Kara Swisher (Burn Book: A Tech Love Story)
“
So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become worried by the frenzy and paranoia of the Nixonian Vietnam policy that consensus itself was threatened. Ordinary intra-mural and extra-mural leaking, to such duly constituted bodies as Congress, was getting out of hand. It was Kissinger who inaugurated the second front or home front of the war; illegally wiretapping the telephones even of his own staff and of his journalistic clientele. (I still love to picture the face of Henry Brandon when he found out what his hero had done to his telephone.) This war against the enemy within was the genesis of Watergate; a nexus of high crime and misdemeanour for which Kissinger himself, as Isaacson wittily points out, largely evaded blame by taking to his ‘shuttle’ and staying airborne. Incredibly, he contrived to argue in public with some success that if it were not for democratic distempers like the impeachment process his own selfless, necessary statesmanship would have been easier to carry out. This is true, but not in the way that he got newspapers like Rees-Mogg’s Times to accept.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
If I could find someone who would love me to the extent I do, I would love her to the extent she could never love me.
”
”
M.F. Moonzajer (The Journalist: Attack on the Central Intelligence Agency)
“
proportionately, being a journalist in a war is more dangerous than being in the Special Forces, and more important.
”
”
A.A. Gill (To America with Love)
“
One of my many weaknesses as a journalist is that I can't ask perfect strangers about the masturbation habits of their ex-spouses, just me being a stuffed shirt again.
”
”
Poe Ballantine (Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere: A Memoir)
“
The final object of this love and gratitude was God. No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child.
”
”
Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist – A Greenwich Village Journalist's Conversion and Commitment to Peace and Justice)
“
Infidelity promises “lives that could never be mine,” as journalist Anna Pulley writes in a beautiful essay about her affair with a married woman. “I was,” she writes, “a road she would never take. . . . Ours was a love that hinged on possibility—what we could offer each other was infinite potential. Reality never stood a chance against that kind of promise. . . . She represented a singular perfection, she had to because she contained none of the trappings of a real relationship. . . . She was perfect in part because she was an escape, she seemed always to offer more.”3
”
”
Esther Perel (The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity)
“
Exhibit A: I’m guessing you’re no fan of socialism, which was a founding principle of the Nazi movement. The name “Nazi” is an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which most of today’s Democrat socialists conveniently forget. Actually, that’s an understatement. These people don’t just overlook this truth, they’ve totally rewritten history on the matter. These days, Nazism gets associated with conservatism at the drop of a hat, but historically it stems from the left. Adolf Hitler? An art-loving vegetarian who seized power by wooing voters away from Germany’s Social Democrat and communist parties. Italy’s Benito Mussolini? Raised on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital before starting his career as a left-wing journalist and, later, implementing a deadly fascist regime.
”
”
Dave Rubin (Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason)
“
People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….]
I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors:
Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space.
[…] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
I love music writing and have a lot of time for journalists, but I’m often bemused when criticism is levelled against music for what it is not, rather than how successfully it has managed to be what it actually is. With music you are trying to achieve what you want, whether you successfully manage it is the issue. To say something is at fault because it is not what you (the writer) want it to be is ludicrous.
”
”
Stuart Braithwaite (Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth)
“
(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children)
So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course. There are web pages telling them how to defend themselves against accusations, to retain confidence about their ‘loving and natural’ feelings for children, with advice on what lawyers to approach, how to complain, how to harass those helping their children. Then there’s the Men’s Movements, their web pages throbbing with excitement if they find ‘proof’ of conspiracy between feminists, divorcing wives and therapists to victimise men, fathers and husbands.
Then there are journalists. A few have been vitally important in the US and Britain in establishing the fightback, using their power and influence to distort the work of child protection professionals and campaign against children’s testimony. Then there are other journalists who dance in and out of the debates waggling their columns behind them, rarely observing basic journalistic manners, but who use this debate to service something else – a crack at the welfare state, standards, feminism, ‘touchy, feely, post-Diana victimhood’. Then there is the academic voice, landing in the middle of court cases or inquiries, offering ‘rational authority’. Then there is the government. During the entire period of discovery and denial, not one Cabinet minister made a statement about the prevalence of sexual abuse or the harm it caused.
Finally there are the ‘retractors’. For this movement to take off, it had to have ‘human interest’ victims – the accused – and then a happy ending – the ‘retractors’. We are aware that those ‘retractors’ whose parents trail them to newspapers, television studios and conferences are struggling. Lest we forget, they recanted under palpable pressure.
”
”
Beatrix Campbell (Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony)
“
If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad.
”
”
Michael Hastings (I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story)
“
To be gripped by Foteini's calloused, rustic hand felt like being lovingly embraced by a 1,000 year old olive tree. For the first time since I arrived I felt the outer layer of my foreignness begin to peel away, just a tiny bit.
”
”
Marjory McGinn (Things Can Only Get Feta: Two journalists and their crazy dog living through the Greek crisis)
“
The niggers did not post sentries over their dead. Niggers did not pound on the door of the sheriff, they did not haunt the offices of the newspapermen. No sheriff paid them any mind, no journalist listened to their stories. The bodies of their loved ones disappeared into sacks and reappeared in the cool cellars of medical schools to relinquish their secrets. Every one of them a miracle, in Stevens’s view, providing instruction into the intricacies of God’s design.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
I turn to look at Jake. “You’re running from a bunch of eight-year-olds?”
The rambunctious groups starts to point at the library and clamors toward the door, ready to enter.
Jake looks at me. “They scare me. Can you please help me out?
”
”
Leslea Wahl (The Perfect Blindside)
“
As Anthony would tell the journalist Nellie Bly, “I’ve been in love a thousand times! . . . But I never loved any one so much that I thought it would last. . . . I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth, she became a pet and a doll. Just think, had I married at twenty, I would have been a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years.”3 Of
”
”
Rebecca Traister (All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation)
“
And although better coverage of the outbreak’s evolution in the press couldn’t have stopped the influenza virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
I did not pay much attention, and since it seemed to prolong itself I began to meditate upon the writer’s life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world’s indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit with a good grace to its hazards. He depends upon a fickle public. He is at the mercy of journalists who want to interview him and photographers who want to take his picture, of editors who harry him for copy and tax gatherers who harry him for income tax, of persons of quality who ask him to lunch and secretaries of institutes who ask him to lecture, of women who want to marry him and women who want to divorce him, of youths who want his autograph, actors who want parts and strangers who want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice on their matrimonial affairs and earnest young men who want advice on their compositions, of agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers, critics, and his own conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale)
“
People love getting into spats on the internet. Some people spend their whole lives doing it. The only people who object to ridicule and criticism are touchy, fragile celebrities and journalists with brittle egos who can’t cope with readers pointing out how biased and stupid they are.
”
”
Milo Yiannopoulos (Dangerous)
“
All music has magic in it ya know, even shitty pop music. Thelonious Monk was once asked about what kind of music he liked to listen to, and he replied, “I love all music.” The journalist persisted, asking, “Even country music?” Monk said, “What part of what I just said do you not understand?
”
”
Flea (Acid for the Children: A Memoir)
“
The fact is, you’re as bad as some of those scum journalists who reported it. Stephanie was a lovely girl, lovely, and for a time we were happy together. But she was a mess. She drank and she took recreational drugs and in the end she died in Barbados. But I wasn’t even on the boat when it happened.
”
”
Anthony Horowitz (The Sentence is Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #2))
“
It had 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)
“
The pioneering American journalist Marlene Sanders, who was the first woman to report from Vietnam during the war (and who was the mother of a son), once gave this piece of advice to a younger journalist: “Never apologize for working. You love what you do, and loving what you do is a great gift to give your child.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
“
Ah, but let’s consider Communion for a moment,” he replied. “What’s odd is that these early followers of Jesus didn’t get together to celebrate his teachings or how wonderful he was. They came together regularly to have a celebration meal for one reason: to remember that Jesus had been publicly slaughtered in a grotesque and humiliating way. “Think about this in modern terms. If a group of people loved John F. Kennedy, they might meet regularly to remember his confrontation with Russia, his promotion of civil rights, and his charismatic personality. But they’re not going to celebrate the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered him!
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus)
“
The dilemma in U.S. culture is that we don’t really distinguish what I am defining as Humble Inquiry carefully enough from leading questions, rhetorical questions, embarrassing questions, or statements in the form of questions—such as journalists seem to love— which are deliberately provocative and intended to put you down.
”
”
Edgar H. Schein (Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling)
“
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.
”
”
Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist – A Greenwich Village Journalist's Conversion and Commitment to Peace and Justice)
“
Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilisation are the only people by whom civilisation is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays)
“
Hence it's funny to read in the New York Times that liberal Catholic activists are pushing for a change in Church teaching on issues relating to -- well, let's admit it, sex. Nobody is out there demanding the popes revisit the condemnation of Jansenism (don't ask), or settle the question of whether divine grace is or isn't resistable. No, journalists want to know what the Church thinks about whether one person should poke another and, if so, where, when, and how. What liberal Catholics and the journalists who love them are really asking for isfor the Church to admit that it was teaching a set of harsh, repressive errors for nineteen centuries and that now it is very, very sorry.
”
”
John Zmirak (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism)
“
Harlow's results showed that a mother's reassuring gentle touch —what Harlow called "contact comfort"—is a more important factor in an infant's world than food. The journalist Deborah Blum, in her excellent biography of Harlow, Love at Goon Park, summarizes his initial findings: that for a baby primate, "food is sustenance but a good hug is life itself.
”
”
Andrew Westoll (The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A True Story of Resilience and Recovery)
“
Journalists are not entertainers. We are reporters. We go to places that are unpopular. We broadcast voices that are controversial. We are not here to win popularity contests. We are here to cover the issues critical to a democratic society. We have to pressure the media, to shame the media into going into these forgotten places where so many are sent to waste away in silence.
”
”
Amy Goodman (The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them)
“
Never Trust...
Never trust
a skinny cook,
a kid in a hoodie,
a hooker who says she loves you,
a wife secretly planning to divorce you,
a policemen who didn't read you your rights,
a journalist who says agrees what you say is 'off the record',
a man who says, 'We don't need no contract, my word's my bond'.
Place your trust in God and in God alone ~
all others pay cash.
Trust Me
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
...if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
“
A country is mostly the people in it,” Maud said. “I don’t love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I’m staying, to fight the Nazis.
”
”
Ken Follett (Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2))
“
Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists.
”
”
Robert Coover (The Public Burning)
“
When we recall the great influence which Spenser's poetry has exerted on English poets who have lived and written since his day, we can clearly see how the two kinds of Platonism - a direct Platonism, and a Platonism long ago transmuted and worked right down into the emotions of common people by the passionate Christianity of the Dark and Middle Ages - combined to beget the infinite suggestiveness which is now contained in such words as 'love' and 'beauty'. Let us remember, then, that every time we abuse these terms, or use them too lightly, we are draining them of their power; every time a society journalist or a film producer exploits this vast suggestiveness to tickle a vanity or dignify a lust, he is squandering a great pile of spiritual capital which has been laid up by centuries of weary effort.
”
”
Owen Barfield (History in English Words)
“
The insights that freed Jud were similar to the ones that led to my own recovery from spiritual workaholism after being confronted by my boss years ago. I came to realize that God didn’t love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God. I could stop working like a slave to justify myself; I just needed to recognize — and celebrate — my adoption as God’s child.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
“
St. Bride’s is the journalist’s church on Fleet Street. There have been seven churches on this spot. It’s named for the Irish saint Brigit of Kildare, the virginal head of the old, equal-opportunity Celtic Church. She has, over the years, become the patron of babies, blacksmiths, chickens, bastards, children of abusive fathers, and printing presses. It must have been the combination of bastards and ink that brought her to hacks.
”
”
A.A. Gill (To America with Love)
“
In their articles and on the air, political journalists loved including local color (meat on a stick at the state fair, polka bands, caucuses held in a gun shop or grain elevator) in inverse proportions to how much they'd disdain such spectacles in their actual lives, off the job. A reporter had once told me that if she was getting dinner on her own on the road, she would choose a restaurant by googling the zip code and kale salad.
”
”
Curtis Sittenfeld (Rodham)
“
As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about boring, impenetrable people. ...If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
“
There is nothing that the media could say to me that would justify the way they’ve acted. You can hound me. You can follow me, but in no way should you frighten those around me. To harm my wife and potentially harm my daughter—there is no excuse that could put any of you on the right side of morality. I met Rose when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and through what she would call fate and I’d call circumstance of our hobbies, we’d cross paths dozens of times over the course of a decade. At seventeen, I attended the same national Model UN conference as Rose, and a delegate for Greenland locked us in a janitorial closet. He also stole our phones. He had to beat us dishonorably because he couldn’t beat us any other way. Rose said being locked in a confined space with me was the worst two hours of her life" They look bemused, brows furrowing. I can’t help but smile.
“You’re confused because you don’t know whether she was exaggerating or whether she was being truthful. But the truth is that we are complex people with the ability to love to hate and to hate to love, and I wouldn’t trade her for any other person. So that day, stuck beside mops and dirtied towels, I could’ve picked the lock five minutes in and let her go. Instead, I purposefully spent two hours with a girl who wore passion like a dress made of diamonds and hair made of flames. Every day of my life, I am enamored. Every day of my life, I am bewitched. And every day of my life, I spend it with her.”
My chest swells with more power, lifting me higher.
“I’ve slept with many different kinds of people, and yes, the three that spoke to the press are among them. Rose is the only person I’ve ever loved, and through that love, we married and started a family. There is no other meaning behind this, and for you to conjure one is nothing less than a malicious attack against my marriage and my child. Anything else has no relevance. I can’t be what you need me to be. So you’ll have to accept this version or waste your time questioning something that has no answer. I know acceptance isn’t easy when you’re unsure of what you’re accepting, but all I can say is that you’re accepting me as me. I leave them with a quote from Sylvia Plath.
“‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.’” My lips pull higher, into a livelier smile. “‘I am, I am, I am.’”
With this, I step away from the podium, and I exit to a cacophony of journalists shouting and asking me to clarify.
Adapt to me.
I’m satisfied, more than I even predicted.
Some people will rewind this conference on their television, to listen closely and try to understand me. I don’t need their understanding, but my daughter will—and I hope the minds of her peers are wide open with vibrant hues of passion.
I hope they all paint the world with color.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters #3))
“
He was loving but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as being important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus)
“
Some people still assume that, because we got legally married, he was the love of my life—and I was his,” Steinem confided, years later, to the journalist Rebecca Traister, who was investigating the history of single women in the US. “That’s such a misunderstanding of human uniqueness. He had been married twice before and he had wonderful grown children. I had been happily in love with men who are still my friends and chosen family. Some people have one partner for life, but most don’t—and each of our loves is crucial and unique.
”
”
Mona Chollet (In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial)
“
adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their own personal feelings. If in the Middle Ages two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they had never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their lack of guilt would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men are in love, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.’ Interestingly enough, today even religious zealots adopt this humanistic discourse when they want to influence public opinion. For example, every year for the past decade the Israeli LGBT community has held a gay pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem. It’s a unique day of harmony in this conflict-riven city, because it is the one occasion when religious Jews, Muslims and Christians suddenly find a common cause – they all fume in accord against the gay parade. What’s really interesting, though, is the argument they use. They don’t say, ‘These sinners shouldn’t hold a gay parade because God forbids homosexuality.’ Rather, they explain to every available microphone and TV camera that ‘seeing a gay parade passing through the holy city of Jerusalem hurts our feelings. Just as gay people want us to respect their feelings, they should respect ours.’ On 7 January 2015 Muslim fanatics massacred several staff members of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, because the magazine published caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. In the following days, many Muslim organisations condemned the attack, yet some could not resist adding a ‘but’ clause. For example, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate denounced the terrorists for their use of violence, but in the same breath denounced the magazine for ‘hurting the feelings of millions of Muslims across the world’.2 Note that the Syndicate did not blame the magazine for disobeying God’s will. That’s what we call progress.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
the Christian Science Monitor and the AP. I wrote to the photo desk of the New York Times several times, offering myself up as a stringer, and each time my e-mail went unanswered. I wrote directly to the New York Times correspondents based in India and asked if I could shoot anything for them. They told me they took their own pictures while on assignment. I would keep trying. I felt that if I could only shoot for the New York Times—to me, the newspaper that most influenced American foreign policy and that employed the world’s best journalists—I would reach the pinnacle of my career.
”
”
Lynsey Addario (It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War)
“
The really strange thing about this is that it was one of the Fog Facts.
That is, it was not a secret. It was known. But it was not known. That is, if you asked a knowledgeable journalist, or political analyst, or a historian, they knew about it. If you yourself went and checked the record, you could find it out. But if you asked the man in the street if President Scott, who loved to have his picture taken among the troops and driving armored vehicles and aboard naval vessels, if you asked if Scott had found a way to evade service in Vietnam, they wouldn't have a clue, and, unless they were anti-Scott already, they wouldn't believe it.
In the information age there is so much information that sorting and focus and giving the appropriate weight to anything have become incredibly difficult. Then some fact, or event, or factoid mysteriously captures the world's attention and there's a media frenzy. Like Clinton and Lewinsky. Like O. J. Simpson. And everybody in the world knows everything about it. On the flip side are the Fog Facts, important things that nobody seems able to focus on any more than the can focus on a single droplet in the mist. They are known, but not known.
”
”
Larry Beinhart (The Librarian)
“
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” –G. K. Chesterton English philosopher known as the “prince of paradox” “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” –John Gunther American journalist, author of Death Be Not Proud “The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.” –Epicurus Ancient Greek philosopher, founder of the school of Epicureanism “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” –Eleanor Roosevelt Longest-serving First Lady of the United States, diplomat, and activist
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges)
“
Believe Women" grew into one of the catchphrases of the day. Jodi and Megan were sympathetic to the spirit behind that imperative: They had spent their careers getting women's stories into print. But the obligation of journalists was to scrutinize, verify, check, and question information. ( A former editor of Megan's displayed a sign on his desk that read: IF YOUR MOTHER TELLS YOU SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT) The Weinstein story had impact in part because it had achieved something that, in 2018, seemed rare and precious broad consensus on the facts. Accountability was easy to insist on, but in some cases, much trickier to assign.
”
”
Jodi Kantor (She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement)
“
I Won’t Write Your Obituary
You asked if you could call to say goodbye if you were ever really gonna kill yourself.
Sure, but I won’t write your obituary.
I’ll commission it from some dead-end journalist who will say things like:
“At peace… Better place… Fought the good fight…”
Maybe reference the loving embrace of Capital-G-God at least 4 times.
Maybe quote Charles fucking Bukowski.
And I won’t stop them because I won’t write your obituary.
But if you call me, I will write you a new sky, one you can taste.
I will write you a D-I-Y cloud maker so on days when you can’t do anything you can still make clouds in whatever shape you want them.
I will write you letters, messages in bottles, in cages, in orange peels, in the distance between here and the moon, in forests and rivers and bird songs.
I will write you songs. I can’t write music, but I’ll find Rihanna, and I’ll get her to write you music if it will make you want to dance a little longer.
I will write you a body whose veins are electricity because outlets are easier to find than good shrinks, but we will find you a good shrink.
I will write you 1-800-273-8255, that’s the suicide hotline; we can call it together.
And yeah, you can call me, but I won’t tell you it’s okay, that I forgive you.
I won’t say “goodbye” or “I love you” one last time.
You won’t leave on good terms with me,
Because I will not forgive you.
I won’t read you your last rights, absolve you of sin, watch you sail away on a flaming viking ship, my hand glued to my forehead.
I will not hold your hand steady around a gun.
And after, I won’t come by to pick up the package of body parts you will have left specifically for me.
I’ll get a call like “Ma’am, what would you have us do with them?”
And I’ll say, “Burn them. Feed them to stray cats. Throw them at school children. Hurl them at the sea. I don’t care. I don’t want them.”
I don’t want your heart. It’s not yours anymore, it’s just a heart now and I already have one.
I don’t want your lungs, just deflated birthday party balloons that can’t breathe anymore.
I don’t want a jar of your teeth as a memento.
I don’t want your ripped off skin, a blanket to wrap myself in when I need to feel like your still here.
You won’t be there.
There’s no blood there, there’s no life there, there’s no you there. I want you.
And I will write you so many fucking dead friend poems, that people will confuse my tongue with your tombstone and try to plant daisies in my throat before I ever write you an obituary while you’re still fucking here.
So the answer to your question is “yes”.
If you’re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please, call me.
”
”
Nora Cooper
“
I began to meditate upon the writer’s life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world’s indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit with a good grace to its hazards. He depends upon a fickle public. He is at the mercy of journalists who want to interview him and photographers who want to take his picture, of editors who harry him for copy and tax gatherers who harry him for income tax, of persons of quality who ask him to lunch and secretaries of institutes who ask him to lecture, of women who want to marry him and women who want to divorce him, of youths who want his autograph, actors who want parts and strangers who want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice on their matrimonial affairs and earnest young men who want advice on their compositions, of agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers, critics, and his own conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham
“
We all speak about the privacy of communication and the right to publish. That’s something that’s quite easy to understand—it has a long history—and, in fact, journalists love to talk about it because they’re protecting their own interests. But if we compare that value to the value of the privacy and freedom of economic interaction, actually every time the CIA sees an economic interaction they can see that it’s this party from this location to this party in this location, and they have a figure to the value and importance of the interaction. So isn’t the freedom, or privacy, of economic interactions actually more important than the freedom of speech, because economic interactions really underpin the whole structure of society?
”
”
Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet)
“
She still loved the profession and enjoyed the lives and piece to cameras, but she knew it was all a tad too farcical at times. There were far too many stories they reported and forgot. Far too many conflicts that were once headlines and had captured the imaginations of many now awaited resolution, stale and unwanted as yesterday’s tea. It was hard to keep up your spirit when you started realizing it was just a job after all and that a headline did not change someone’s destiny. Except maybe the reporter’s if she or he was picked up by a rival channel for better pay. So getting into the profession wanting to make a difference and working for the greater good as the journalists of yore had done was certainly not an option anymore.
”
”
Shweta Ganesh Kumar (Between The Headlines)
“
She was a little removed,” Jack said as an adult. In private, he complained that Rose never told him that she loved him. Jack’s friend Charles Spalding, who saw the family up close, described Rose as “so cold, so distant from the whole thing . . . I doubt if she ever rumpled the kid’s hair in his whole life. . . . It just didn’t exist: the business of letting your son know you’re close, that she’s there. She wasn’t.” Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy told the journalist Theodore White that “history made him [Jack] what he was . . . this lonely sick boy. His mother really didn’t love him. . . . She likes to go around talking about being the daughter of the Mayor of Boston, or how she was an ambassador’s wife. . . . She didn’t love him. . . . History made him what he was.
”
”
Robert Dallek (An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963)
“
In their book Warrior Lovers, an analysis of erotic fiction by women, the psychologist Catherine Salmon and the anthropologist Donald Symons wrote, "To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other sex is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.... The contrasts between romance novels and porn videos are so numerous and profound that they can make one marvel that men and women ever get together at all, much less stay together and successfully rear children." Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other sex, it is a window into each sex's unalloyed desires. ... Men fantasize about copulating with bodies; women fantasize about making love to people.
Rape is not exactly a normal part of male sexuality, but it is made possible by the fact that male desire can be indiscriminate in its choice of a sexual partner and indifferent to the partner's inner life--indeed, "object" can be a more fitting term than "partner." The difference in the sexes' conception of sex translates into a difference in how they perceive the harm of sexual aggression. ... The sexual abyss offers a complementary explanation of the callous treatment of rape victims in traditional legal and moral codes. It may come from more than the ruthless exercise of power by males over females; it may also come from a parochial inability of men to conceive of a mind unlike theirs, a mind that finds the prospect of abrupt, unsolicited sex with a stranger to be repugnant rather than appealing. A society in which men work side by side with women, and are forced to take their interests into account while justifying their own, is a society in which this thick-headed incuriosity is less likely to remain intact.
The sexual abyss also helps to explain the politically correct ideology of rape. ... In the case of rape, the correct belief is that rape has nothing to do with sex and only to do with power. As (Susan) Brownmiller put it, "From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." ... Brownmiller wrote that she adapted the theory from the ideas of an old communist professor of hers, and it does fit the Marxist conception that all human behavior is to be explained as a struggle for power between groups. But if I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to a gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate.
Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence, and today rape centers unanimously insist that "rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust--it's about aggression, power, and humiliation, using sex as the weapon. The rapist's goal is domination." (To which the journalist Heather MacDonald replies: "The guys who push themselves on women at keggers are after one thing only, and it's not reinstatement of the patriarchy.")
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
“
What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christshaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. So the key I propose for translating Jesus’ unique message to the Israel of his day into our message to our contemporaries is to grasp the parallel, which is woven deeply into both Testaments, between the human call to bear God’s image and Israel’s call to be the light of the world. Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it. “As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive sins and they are forgiven, retain them and they are retained.” That last double command belongs exactly at this point. We are to go out into the world with the divine authority to forgive and retain sins. When Jesus forgave sins, they said he was blaspheming; how then can we imagine such a thing for ourselves? Answer: because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. God intends to do through us for the wider world that for which the foundation was laid in Jesus. We are to live and tell the story of the prodigal and the older brother; to announce God’s glad, exuberant, richly healing welcome for sinners, and at the same time God’s sorrowful but implacable opposition to those who persist in arrogance, oppression and greed. Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice and greed.
”
”
N.T. Wright (The Challenge of Jesus)
“
In fact, Hinduism�s pervading influence seems to go much earlier than Christianity. American mathematician, A. Seindenberg, has for example shown that the Sulbasutras, the ancient Vedic science of mathematics, constitute the source of mathematics in the Antic world, from Babylon to Greece : � the arithmetic equations of the Sulbasutras he writes, were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians, as well as in the edification of Egyptian pyramids, in particular the funeral altar in form of pyramid known in the vedic world as smasana-cit (Seindenberg 1978: 329). In astronomy too, the "Indus" (from the valley of the Indus) have left a universal legacy, determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly : � the movement of stars which was calculated by Hindus 4500 years ago, does not differ even by a minute from the tables which we are using today". And he concludes: "the Hindu systems of astronomy are much more ancient than those of the Egyptians - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge �. There is also no doubt that the Greeks heavily borrowed from the "Indus". Danielou notes that the Greek cult of Dionysos, which later became Bacchus with the Romans, is a branch of Shivaism : � Greeks spoke of India as the sacred territory of Dionysos and even historians of Alexander the Great identified the Indian Shiva with Dionysos and mention the dates and legends of the Puranas �. French philosopher and Le Monde journalist Jean-Paul Droit, recently wrote in his book "The Forgetfulness of India" that � the Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy, that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad Gita �.
”
”
François Gautier (A Western journalist on India: The ferengi's columns)
“
Adela Rogers St. Johns, always the journalist closest to Gable, wrote that “The King is dead. Long live the King. There has been no successor, nor will be. The title died with him.” She recalled that Gable once told her, “I don’t believe I’m king of anything, but I know why they like to think I am. I’m not much of an actor, but I’m not bad unless it’s one of those things outside my comprehension. I work hard. I’m no Adonis, and I’m as American as the telephone poles I used to climb to make a living. So men don’t get sore if their women folks like me on the screen. I’m one of them, they know it, so it’s a compliment to them. They see me broke, in trouble, scared of things that go bump in the night, but I come out fighting. They see me making love to Jean Harlow or Claudette Colbert, and they say, ‘If he can do it, I can do it,’ and figure it’ll be fun to go home and to make love to their wives.
”
”
Warren G. Harris (Clark Gable: A Biography)
“
I begin this chapter with President Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Speech on January 11, 1989. President Reagan encouraged the rising generation to “let ’em know and nail ’em on it”—that is, to push back against teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, and others in the governing generation who manipulate and deceive them: An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs [protection]. So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.1
”
”
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
“
Tina, who worked at the Hampshire Gazette and drank like a journalist in a movie, was loudly musing about getting her shadow altered to have a cat tail. “Guys love a tail,” Tina proclaimed, to protests by nearly everyone. Aimee thought Tina shouldn’t consider fetishes along a gender binary. Ian wanted it to be known that he thought it was disgusting, and that men did not want to molest animals. The artist agreed it was kind of hot, but his comic was about saucy mice.
Charlie told Tina that maybe she had misunderstood what “getting some tail” actually meant.
“Mermaids, right?” Vince asked, in such a clueless just-joined-the-conversation tone that it was hard to know if he was joking, or if he’d misheard the earlier part.
It didn’t matter. Everyone laughed. It was funny either way.
As Charlie poured more bourbon—with ice this time—she decided she was glad she’d come. She was just buzzed enough to feel an expansive warmth for the people in the room. See, she was fine being a normal person and doing normal-person things.
”
”
Holly Black (Book of Night (Book of Night, #1))
“
One night, Abby, who knows I understand life best through metaphors, said this: “Glennon, I want us to think of our love as an island. On our island is you, me, the kids—and real love. The kind of love novels are written about and people spend lifetimes trying to find. The holy grail. The most precious thing. The thing. We have it. It’s still young and new, so we’re going to protect it. Imagine that we’ve surrounded our island with a moat filled with alligators. We will not lower the drawbridge to let anyone’s fear onto our island. On our island is only us and love. Leave anything else on the other side of the moat. Over there, it can’t hurt us. We’re here, happy on our island. Let them scream fear or hate, whatever. We can’t even hear it. Too much music. Only love in, babe.” Every time an internet troll, journalist, or fundamentalist minister shared self-righteous judgment, I’d smile and imagine his tomato-red face screaming on the other side of the moat, while Abby, the kids, and I kept dancing on our island. None of it could touch us.
”
”
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)
“
In a televised version of one of Nancy’s books, these child hunts were given a more sinister connotation with the children running terrified through woods while their father, on horseback, thundered after them with a pack of hounds baying. In fact the children loved it – they thought the hound was ‘so clever’.29 In her novel Nancy had referred to ‘four great hounds in full cry after two little girls’ and ‘Uncle Matthew and the rest would follow on horseback’.30 As a result, fiction overlaid fact, and during research for this book I met people who believed, and read articles that stated, that the Mitfords led the lives of the fictional Radletts, and at least one American journalist was convinced that David had ‘hunted’ his poor abused children with dogs. There was never any pressure to conform and the children grew as they wanted. There were no half-measures in their behaviour. ‘We either laughed so uproariously that it drove the grown-ups mad, or else it was a frightful row which ended in one of us bouncing out of the room in floods of tears, banging the door as loud as possible.
”
”
Mary S. Lovell (The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family)
“
This is precisely the test of true humility, that one no longer presumes to judge whether or not one is too miserable to be included in the call to sanctity but simply answers the merciful love of God by sinking down into adoration.” And this sinking down, this humility, leads to confidence. Hildebrand continues, “The question whether I feel worthy to be called is beside the point; that God has called is the one thing that matters.”15 Understanding that our emotions are not the measure of God’s call may go a long way to closing the confidence gap between men and women. In the May 2014 cover story of the Atlantic, journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman write about the sociological phenomenon in which men tend to overestimate their abilities while women tend to underestimate theirs, even when controlled evaluations show no difference in competence. Sociologists suggest many causes for the confidence gap—including even chemical differences—but the result of such a gap is that women’s self-doubt keeps them from acting, while men’s overconfidence leads them to act when they shouldn’t. Of course, this does not mean that all men have an inflated sense of their abilities or that some women couldn’t use a dose of humility. But the research does reveal how our emotions don’t always correspond with reality. And because they don’t, we can’t be led by them—especially when it comes to the Holy Spirit’s call on our life.
”
”
Hannah Anderson (Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul)
“
[THE DAILY BREATH]
Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician, once said: "To those who wish to see, God gives them sufficient light. To those who doesn't wish to see, God gives them sufficient darkness." Seeing the Truth is a choice. Listening to my words is a choice. Healing is a choice.
If want scientific evidence about the existence of God, there is a wealth of data to support it. Dr. Jeffrey Long, M.D. used the best scientific techniques available today to study more than 4,000 people who had near-death experiences and found themselves face to face with our Heavenly Father. Read the book "God and the Afterlife" and you will find it.
If you want scientific evidence about Jesus being the Son of God, Lee Strobel, an atheist investigative journalist discovered it. Read the book "The Case for Christ" and you will find it.
If you want scientific evidence about Jesus still healing today, study the ministries of Dr. Charles Ndifon, T.L. Osborn, Kathryn Kuhlman among others, and you will find it.
But most importantly, if you want to fill the emptiness within you, and experience the perfect love, mercy and forgiveness, if you want to live in the peace of our Heavenly Father, give your body, your mind and your heart to Christ. Give your life to Jesus. The empty place you feel in your heart is reserved only for the spirit of Christ and nothing from this world will fill it.
Look up to heaven, behold Jesus and Live.
”
”
Dragos Bratasanu
“
For those who worked at the reactor or in close proximity to it, what was most seriously affected – and this is very similar to the problems of those who work with missiles – was the genito-urinary system. Their masculinity. But Slavs just do not talk about these things. It’s unacceptable. I once accompanied an English journalist who had prepared some interesting questions on this very topic. He wanted to investigate the human dimension of the problem. When it’s all over, what happens to the human being when he goes back home, to his everyday life, to his sex life? He could find no one prepared to talk openly about it. For instance, he asked to meet the helicopter crews, to talk man-to-man. They duly came, some already retired at thirty-five or forty. One was brought along who had a broken leg caused by senile osteoporosis, because exposure to radiation causes bones to become brittle. The Englishman asked them how they were getting on in their families, with their young wives? The helicopter crews fell silent. They had come to talk about how they had flown five sorties a day, and here someone was asking them about their wives? About … He decided to try talking to them individually, in private. They all replied that their health was fine, the state valued them, and they had loving families. Not one of them would speak frankly. They left, and I could see he was distraught. ‘Now you see,’ he said to me, ‘why nobody trusts you. You deceive even yourselves.
”
”
Svetlana Alexievich (Chernobyl Prayer: Voices from Chernobyl)
“
This bold energetic man of rare intelligence and enterprise must also be understood as a man undone by his own deep flaws. He was known to drink to grievous excess, for example, which often turned him volatile and violent. On the other hand, his evil repute has been wildly exaggerated by careless journalists and their local informants, who seek to embellish their limited acquaintance with a “desperado”; with the result that the real man has been virtually entombed by tale and legend which since his death has petrified as myth. The most lurid view of Mr. Watson is the one perpetuated by the Islanders themselves, for as Dickens observed after his visit to this country, “These Americans do love a scoundrel.” Because his informants tend to imagine that the darkest interpretation is the one the writer wishes to hear, the popular accounts (until now, there have been no others) are invariably sensational as well as speculative: the hard facts, not to speak of “truth,” are missing. Also, this “Bloody Watson” material relates only to his final years in southwest Florida; one rarely encounters any reference to South Carolina, where Edgar Artemas Watson passed his boyhood, nor to the years in the Indian Country (always excepting his alleged role in the slaying of Belle Starr), nor even to the Fort White district of Columbia County in north Florida where he farmed in early manhood, married all three of his wives, and spent almost half of the fifty-five years of his life.
”
”
Peter Matthiessen (Shadow Country)
“
I've spent time with a lot of very busy people: business leaders, prominent journalists, multiple presidents. Despite the unusually high demands on their schedules, something they all have in common is that they carve out time for reading, and for consuming information that may not seem to have anything to do with their jobs. When President Obama released summer reading lists or his top book recommendations for the year, a chorus of 'yeah, right' could occasionally be heard from certain corners of the internet, where skeptics who doubted he had time to read contemporary literature liked to hang out. But President Obama read all those books, and many more. Taking time after a long day to sit down and read some Chinese science fiction, a novel by Jesmyn Ward, or even one of Ron Chernow's biographies was an escape, but it also oxygenated Obama's brain. There may not have been a specific moment when he consciously connected the dots between a novel he read two years earlier and the issue at hand, but moving beyond your own experience is an important part of developing the kind of perspective that helps with decision-making. It's also how the most effective people connect. Developing broad general knowledge gives you the flexibility to adapt to your audience on the fly, as well as the ability to naturally relate to diverse groups. And besides, have you ever recommended a book to someone who ended up really loving it? It's a unique way of understanding someone better, and that kind of communication goes both ways.
”
”
Jen Psaki (Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World)
“
He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. Why are they the planet’s masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation? His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent “opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors…” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
I have noticed that many intellectuals turn themselves off the instant they are confronted with the words witchcraft, magic, occultism, and religion, as if such ideas exert a dangerous power that might weaken their rational faculties. Yet many of these people maintain a generous openness about visionaries, poets, and artists, some of whom may be quite mad according to “rational” standards. They are fascinated by people of diverse professions and lifestyles who have historical ties with, let us say, the Transcendentalists or the Surrealists, as long as the word occult is not mentioned. If Neo-Paganism were presented as an intellectual and artistic movement whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of sexuality, and the meaning of community, academics would flock to study it. Political philosophers would write articles on the Neo-Pagans’ sense of wonder and the minority vision they represent. Literary critics would compare the poetic images in the small magazines published and distributed by the groups with images in the writings of Blake and Whitman. Jungian psychologists would rush to study the Neo-Pagans’ use of ancient archetypes and their love of the classics and ancient lore.
But words like witch and pagan do not rest easily in the mind or on the tongue. Although reporting on Paganism and Wicca has improved in the last decade, pop journalists often still present a Neo-Paganism composed of strange characters and weird rites.
”
”
Margot Adler (Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America)
“
The best time to write about one’s childhood is in the early thirties, when the contrast between early forced passivity and later freedom is marked; and when one’s energy is in full flood. Later, not only have the juices dried up, and the energy ceased to be abundant, but the retracing of the scene of earliest youth has become a task filled with boredom and dismay. The figures that surrounded one have now turned their full face toward us; we understand them perhaps still partially, but we know them only too well. They have ceased to be background to our own terribly important selves; they have irremediably taken on the look of figures in a tragi-comedy; for we know their end, although they themselves do not yet know it. And now—in the middle-fifties—we have traced and retraced their tragedy so often that, in spire of the understanding we have, it bores and offends us. There is a final antidote we must learn: to love and forgive them. This attitude comes hard and must be reached with anguish. For if one is to deal with people in the past—of one’s past—at all, one must feel neither anger nor bitterness. We are not here to expose each other, like journalists writing gossip, or children blaming others for their own bad behavior. And open confession, for certain temperaments (certainly my own), is not good for the soul, in any direct way. To confess is to ask for pardon; and the whole confusing process brings out too much self-pity and too many small emotions in general. For people like myself to look back is a task. It is like re-entering a trap, or a labyrinth, from which one has only too lately, and too narrowly, escaped.
”
”
Louise Bogan (Journey Around My Room: The Autobiography of Louise Bogan)
“
Still, the appeal of regressive ideas is perennial, and the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress always has to be made. When we fail to acknowledge our hard-won progress, we may come to believe that perfect order and universal prosperity are the natural state of affairs, and that every problem is an outrage that calls for blaming evildoers, wrecking institutions, and empowering a leader who will restore the country to its rightful greatness. I have made my own best case for progress and the ideals that made it possible, and have dropped hints on how journalists, intellectuals, and other thoughtful people (including the readers of this book) might avoid contributing to the widespread heedlessness of the gifts of the Enlightenment. Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there’s no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn’t so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baaad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool. But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
”
”
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
“
Another painful irony is that, in exile, many refugees strive to stay alive, while watching an absurd show of fraud politicians, experts, pundits, academics, and journalists on the empire’s payroll fighting about them merely to serve their own careers and fortunes. Some promise to imprison refugees, some promise to build walls to stop their influx, some promise to deny them any human rights, others promise to publicly shame and attack them. Many ask refugees to ‘fuck off and go back to their countries,’ forgetting that their empire left nothing to go back to. Yet, conveniently, nobody promises to stop waging wars against refugees. Nobody promises to stop destroying and economically exploiting the places from which refugees escaped. They discuss everything except the actual solution to the refugee crisis, which is simple: stop waging wars of any sort against other people! Everyone loves hearing themselves talking about the refugee crisis, but almost never talking with refugees in meaningful and honest ways. If they talk with them, it is only to depict them as victims or villains in the unjust courts of the empire’s arrogance. They defend them or hate them, depending on the direction in which they wish to advance their fortunes and careers. It all depends on what they need to put on their CVs at any given time or in any given situation. The last piece of this absurd game is that the careers of every self-appointed mouthpiece for refugees are almost always dependent on paychecks paid by those who directly or indirectly run the military-industrial-complex, the biggest producer of refugees. This last piece is precisely what makes breaking the vicious cycle almost impossible. And such continues the game, all while refugees are sitting and watching in bitter silence.
”
”
Louis Yako
“
In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise.
Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.
”
”
Laurence Kardish (Weimar Cinema 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares)
“
person.” Nobody came to Slote’s flat on Sunday evening. The front page of the Zurich Tageblatt, lying on his desk Monday morning, had a spread of Japanese photographs about the Singapore victory, furnished by the German news service: the surrender ceremony, the hordes of British troops sitting on the earth in a prison compound, the celebration in Tokyo. The story about Father Martin was so short that Slote almost missed it, but there it was at the bottom of the page. The truck driver, who claimed that his brakes had failed, was being held for questioning. The priest was dead, crushed. 19 A Jew’s Journey (excerpt from Aaron Jastrow’s manuscript) APRIL 23, 1942. American bombers have raided Tokyo! My pulse races as it once did when, an immigrant in love with everything American, infected with baseball fever, I saw Babe Ruth hit a home run. For me America is the Babe Ruth of the nations. I unashamedly confess it. And the Babe has come out of his slump and “hit one over the fence”! Strange, how Allied airplane bombs infallibly fall on churches, schools, and hospitals; what a triumph of military imprecision! If Berlin radio speaks the truth—and why should Germans lie, pray?—the RAF has by now flattened nearly all institutions of worship, learning, and healing in Germany, while unerringly missing all other targets. Now we are told that Tokyo was unscathed in the raid except for a great number of schools, hospitals, and temples demolished by the barbarous Americans. Most extraordinary. My niece calls this “Doolittle raid” (an intrepid Army Air Corps colonel of that name led the attack) just a stunt, a token bombing. It will make no difference to the war; so she says. What she did, when the news came through on the BBC, was to entrust her baby to the cook, rush down to the Excelsior Hotel where our fellow journalists are housed, and there get joyously drunk with them. They are drunk nearly all the time, but I have not seen Natalie inebriated in years. I must say that when her chief local admirer, a banal-minded Associated Press reporter, brought her back, she was full of amusing raillery, though scarcely able to walk straight. Her mood was so gay, in fact, that I was tempted to disclose then and there the grave secret I have been harboring for two weeks, not even entrusting it to these pages. But I refrained. She has suffered enough on my account. Time enough to reveal
”
”
Herman Wouk (War and Remembrance (The Henry Family, #2))
“
Friday, March 24, 1944
...Have my parents forgotten that they were young once? Apparently they have. At any rate, they laugh at us when we're serious, and they're serious when we're joking.
Saturday, March 25, 1944
I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too.
Friday, March 31, 1944
My life here has gotten better, much better. God has not forsaken me, and He never will.
Wednesday, April 5, 1944
...I can't imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!
When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?
Tuesday, April 11, 1944
We've been strongly reminded of the fact that we're Jews in chains, chained to one spot, without any rights, but with a thousand obligations. We must put our feelings aside; we must be brave and strong, bear discomfort without complaint, do whatever is in our power and trust in God. One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews!
...It's God who has made us the way we are, but it's also God who will lift us up again...
...
I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion and love. If only I can be myself, I'll be satisfied. I know that I'm a woman, a woman with inner strength and a great deal of courage!
If God lets me live, I'll achieve more than Mother ever did, I'll make my voice heard, I'll go out into the world and work for mankind!
I know now that courage and happiness are needed first!
Monday, April 17, 1944
Oh yes, I still have so much I want to discuss with him, since I don't see the point of just cuddling. Sharing our thoughts with each other requires a great deal of trust, but we'll both be stronger because of it!
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary Of a Young Girl)
“
My darling son: depression at your age is more common than you might think. I remember it very strongly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when I was about twenty-six and felt like killing myself. I think the winter, the cold, the lack of sunshine, for us tropical creatures, is a trigger. And to tell you the truth, the idea that you might soon unpack your bags here, having chucked in all your European plans, makes your mother and me as happy as could be. You have more than earned the equivalent of any university 'degree' and you have used your time so well to educate yourself culturally and personally that if university bores you, it is only natural. Whatever you do from here on in, whether you write or don't write, whether you get a degree or not, whether you work for your mother, or at El Mundo, or at La Ines, or teaching at a high school, or giving lectures like Estanislao Zuleta, or as a psychoanalyst to your parents, sisters and relatives, or simply being Hector Abad Faciolince, will be fine. What matters is that you don't stop being what you have been up till now, a person, who simply by virtue of being the way you are, not for what you write or don't write, or for being brilliant or prominent, but just for being the way you are, has earned the affection, the respect, the acceptance, the trust, the love, of the vast majority of those who know you. So we want to keep seeing you in this way, not as a future great author, or journalist or communicator or professor or poet, but as the son, brother, relative, friend, humanist, who understands others and does not aspire to be understood. It does not matter what people think of you, and gaudy decoration doesn't matter, for those of us who know you are. For goodness' sake, dear Quinquin, how can you think 'we support you (...) because 'that boy could go far'? You have already gone very far, further than all our dreams, better than everything we imagined for any of our children. You should know very well that your mother's and my ambitions are not for glory, or for money, or even for happiness, that word that sounds so pretty but is attained so infrequently and for such short intervals (and maybe for that very reason is so valued), for all our children, but that they might at least achieve well-being, that more solid, more durable, more possible, more attainable word. We have often talked of the anguish of Carlos Castro Saavedra, Manuel Meija Vallejo, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, and so many quasi-geniuses we know. Or Sabato or Rulfo, or even Garcia Marquez. That does not matter. Remember Goethe: 'All theory (I would add, and all art), dear friend, is grey, but only the golden tree of life springs ever green.' What we want for you is to 'live'. And living means many better things than being famous, gaining qualifications or winning prizes. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. Only now, when all that has passed, have I felt really happy. And part of that happiness is Cecilia, you, and all my children and grandchildren. Only the memory of Marta Cecilia tarnishes it. I believe things are that simple, after having gone round and round in circles, complicating them so much. We should do away with this love for things as ethereal as fame, glory, success...
Well, my Quinquin, now you know what I think of you and your future. There's no need for you to worry. You are doing just fine and you'll do better, and when you get to my age or your grandfather's age and you can enjoy the scenery around La Ines that I intend to leave to all of you, with the sunshine, heat and lush greenery, and you'll see I was right. Don't stay there longer than you feel you can. If you want to come back I'll welcome you with open arms. And if you regret it and want to go back again, we can buy you another return flight. A kiss from your father.
”
”
Héctor Abad Faciolince
“
But they {journalists} are still viewed as a rather privileged category. True, they no longer can ride buses free or go to the movies for free as was the case in Mussolini’s day. But they can still get into most museums or exhibitions without paying. If you’re a smooth operator you can get complimentary tickets for shows or the opera. Until recently, you could get a 30% discount on all domestic flights (now it’s 15%). And if you have trouble with any of your utilities,the utility company’s press office will be glad to give you a have in working things out. In addition, since many Italian journalists have a different sense of what constitutes a conflict of interest from what we do in the United States, they often accept any manner of gifts or paid vacations from companies they regularly cover.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
.. Italian journalists (like members of the Italian parliament) are among the best paid in the world. ... By law, all journalists get not only the extra 13th month bonus in December, but a 14th month paycheck in June. When you start out, you nevertheless get 26 vacation days a year...plus five days of personal leave. After five years, your annual vacation days increase to 39 plus five days, and after 15 years to 35 days (plus five). Abs if you work for a lifetime, which means 35 years of social security contributions to INPG, you’ll end up with a pension that is pretty close to your final year’s salary.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
A corrections box such as which appears in many top US or British papers to rectify misspellings, mistaken dates, faulty identifications and so forth, is generally unheard of here... Once I pointed out to Messagero night editor that the first edition he was putting out had misspelled the name of town where the US president was holding a summit. “Oh, no one will notice,” he shrugged rather than change it.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
Sometimes, in fact - and I’ve heard others say the sane thing - I have to read a story about developments in Italy in the foreign press to get a good, quick overall view of what is going on. And this is particularly true if you’ve been away and missed the first few days of coverage; Italian news stories rarely give you any background.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
La Belle Époque in Paris would now be her home. When she was asked by a journalist why she had chosen Paris, she replied, 'I don't know. I thought all women who ran away from their husbands went to Paris.
”
”
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon (Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women)
“
You have to listen. This is important. You are going to kidnap someone to replace your daughter on The Chain.” “What are you talking about?” “You have to select a target and hold one of that person’s loved ones until the target pays the ransom and kidnaps someone in turn. You are going to have to make this exact phone call to whoever you select. What I’m doing to you is what you are going to do to your target. As soon as you carry out your kidnapping and pay the money, my son will be released. As soon as your target kidnaps someone and pays the ransom, your daughter will be released. It’s that simple. That’s how The Chain works and goes on forever.” “What? Who do I pick?” Rachel asks, utterly horrified. “Someone who will not break the rules. No cops, politicians, or journalists—those are deal-breakers. Someone who will commit a kidnapping and pay the money and keep their mouth shut and keep The Chain going.
”
”
Adrian McKinty (The Chain)
“
JEFF GILBERT (journalist; KZOK DJ; concert organizer) Seattle isn’t a glamorous town at all. It was pretty pathetic. Very depressing. That’s where this music came out of. I’ve made this comment before: Grunge isn’t a music style. It’s complaining set to a drop D tuning.
”
”
Mark Yarm (Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge)
“
Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong. — Kathryn Schulz, journalist and author.
”
”
Thibaut Meurisse (Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1))
“
Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent “opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors…” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
You have to understand this was all about the money—and the fear of losing money and privilege—for white American people to stand by and witness this drama for hundreds of years. Responding to online criticism of the looting that ensued after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, journalist Jenée Osterheld put it like this: “I hate that the livelihood of business owners is burning. But so are Black lives. And we know America’s love language is money.
”
”
Larry Ward (America's Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal)
“
The Monks of St Giles is a club. It still exists – still meets. They give themselves Latin names and they meet and compose poetry. They even have a clubhouse, but I'm not going to tell you where it is. Some very influential people are members. And it sounds terrific fun, since they wear robes, but there'd be such a fuss if word got out. Can you imagine the prying, humourless journalists who would love to have a go at them? I can. Composing poetry in private! Not the sort of thing we want in an inclusive Scotland, where everybody will have to be able to read everybody else's poetry!
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The World According to Bertie (44 Scotland Street, #4))
“
She loves to be alone. For her it is the only condition that allows her to work. “I have a degree from the Sorbonne in solitude,” she once told a journalist. “I love solitude. I’m never bored when I’m alone. It’s when I’m with people that I often feel bored.
”
”
Cristina De Stefano (Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend)
“
So, are you going to tell her?” Mark asked. He was, and still is, a persistent person.
Good question, I thought as I stared blankly into space. Am I going to march up to Martina Elizabeth and tell her that I love her? I pondered the question carefully as though it was part of some unscheduled final exam. Instead of answers, however, all I could come up with was a series of dilemmas.
I noticed that Mark was still staring at me with a quizzical look on his face. “What?” I yelped.
“You haven’t answered my question, man,”
I looked down, inhaled deeply, looked up and exhaled very slowly. “I, uh, don’t know.” I turned my gaze to my lunch tray, the other tables, and the clock on the wall. Anything to avoid my best friend’s inquisitive gaze.
“I’ll take that as a resounding ‘no,’” Mark said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No,” Mark said, “but it’s what you meant to say.”
“I – I can’t tell her. Not now.”
“Why the fuck not?” Mark asked, his voice rising in pitch and volume. A group of student journalists from The Serpent’s Tale – Alan Goode, Francisco Vargas, Juan Calderon and Roger Lawrence – looked at us with bemused expressions from one of the neighboring tables. Mark noticed, cleared his throat and lowered his voice to a half-whisper. “Why don’t you tell her, you dumbass?”
“I can’t,” I repeated, shaking my head emphatically.
“What are you so afraid of?”
Another good question. “Nothing…everything,” I replied.
“What, pray tell, do you mean?” Mark asked. “Are you more afraid that she doesn’t like you, or that she does?
”
”
Alex Diaz-Granados (Reunion: A Story: A Novella)
“
I ordered one more and the bartender made a deal with me. He'd only splash whiskey on my ice if I gave him my car keys. That sounded like a good deal to me and I took it.
"Death is my beat"
"Technically, I don't work for you. My paper has rules about reporters misrepresenting themselves."
Schifino reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash. He handed a dollar across the desk to me. I reached across the murder scene photos to take it.
"There," he said. "I just paid you a dollar. You work for me."
I thought he was guilty as sin. It was the only way I could live with losing the case.
Abasiophilia.
Paraphilia.
Single-Bullet Theory: "I mean like the love of your life. Everybody's got one person out there. One bullet. And if you're lucky in life, you get to meet that person. And once you do, once you're shot through the heart, then there's nobody else. No matter what happens--death, divorce, infidelity, whatever--nobody else can ever come close. That's the single-bullet theory."
Unrelenting pain. He waited for someone to stop it. To save him from it. But no one came. No one heard him.
He waited in darkness.
”
”
Michael Connelly (The Scarecrow (Jack McEvoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20))
“
In addition to curiosity and a passion for innovation, the most successful journalists are also knowledgeable, creative, flexible, and open-minded.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
If John Quincy Adams was afraid of Anne Royall, he had good reason to be. The woman was a goddamn Terminator. She could not be scared, and she could not be stopped: Court rulings, public harassment, and attempts on her life notwithstanding, she kept publishing until her death at the age of eighty-five. She wasn’t always right, or even admirable—she was on the wrong side of abolition, for one thing—but she was a historically formidable human being. And (Alice Morse Earle doesn’t even mention this) she was quite probably the first female journalist in the United States. And yet, for all that, she was remembered by successive generations as a crazy bitch who almost got thrown into a river. If it can happen to Anne Royall, who left a larger-than-average paper trail, one wonders how many other women’s stories have been lost to us, through the strategic application of “insanity” diagnoses or public humiliation. How many firsts are still waiting for us, in those moldy, decaying old books, needing only a little careful dusting-off to come back to life?
”
”
Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why)
“
I never understood how faith calling and vocational calling operated together, not really. (I thought that calling and career were synonymous.) And sure, I was a person of faith and didn’t hide it from my co-workers, but I didn’t allow it to directly influence my decision-making in the office either. I treated my faith calling and my vocational calling as two separate things. Wrapped up in what I did (a journalist) instead of who I was (loved by God and called to share his love), I was terrified of failure, of not measuring up.
”
”
Paula Faris (Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling)
“
Ambedkar’s dislike for Gandhi was intense. In 1946, his Bombay publishers,Thackers and Co. brought out a book by the Gandhi-worshipping journalist Krishnalal Shridharani, entitled The Mahatma and the World. Climbing the stairs to his publisher’s office, Ambedkar was outraged to see a poster advertising this book. ‘The number of books that people write on this old man takes my breath away,’ he grumbled, pointing at the display board. Not long afterwards, he met the journalist Vincent Sheen, and told him that if Americans loved Gandhi so much, they should import him to the United States so that Indians would at last be rid of him.
”
”
Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
“
America has disappointed me,” she says to an American interviewer during the Vietnam War. “It’s like when you’re completely in love with a person, and you get married, and then, day after day, you realize that the person isn’t as
”
”
Cristina De Stefano (Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend)
“
What’s the point getting an education—both of them qualified, successful corporate journalists—if you don’t have a clue how to love your child?
”
”
Amita Murray (Arya Winters and the Tiramisu of Death (Arya Winters, #1))
“
All Yang’s men were in by midday and our party straggled in later completely done in. Chuen came in first. He was wearing a dark green commando’s beret, long green canvas boots with rubber soles – American jungle boots – and green battle-dress with lovely blue parachute wings over his left pocket. He is a little cheerful man and speaks fair English. Then came Humpleman, very young, blue-eyed, with a bland and serious manner; then Jim Hannah, lean, dark, hook-nosed, moustached, and over forty. At one time he was a journalist and in the rubber slump in Malaya he worked in Australia. Then came Harrison, short, with red face and sandy hair – a very silent Scot, also a planter. John and Richard brought up the rear, absolutely exhausted but very contented. After a meal they had got out on to the field and had everything ready an hour before midnight. Then they waited and waited and, as nothing happened, they got more and more worried and despondent. One hour late, then two hours. It was bitterly cold, and at last they were just talking of returning home when a faint drone was heard from the west. They were so excited that their hearts almost choked them! At last the Lib came over. Apparently she followed up the Perak river, then came across on a bearing. The moon was shining brilliantly and the sky was covered with high, white, fleecy clouds. The fires, freshly stoked with dry atap, burned up brightly, and Quayle with his torch flashed the recognition letter faster and faster with growing excitement as the great Lib, after flying round in a wide circle, swooped overhead, vast and glistening in the moonlight. Suddenly four little white balls seemed to appear in the plane’s wake, and four tiny black forms were seen swinging from side to side below them. John, Richard, and Frank all agreed it was the most exciting moment of their lives. While they were still lost in wonder, things started happening. Hannah and Harrison landed beautifully and were immediately fielded, but Humpleman fell in the stream and was retrieved soaking wet. The containers and packages, which had been released immediately after the bodies, now came down and all landed
”
”
F. Spencer Chapman (The Jungle is Neutral: The Epic True Story of One Man’s War Behind Enemy Lines)
“
Taxi drivers are some of my best friends in every city I visit. I wish to write a book on my encounters with taxi drivers in the Middle East one day. They see so much. They encounter all kinds of people. They learn to interact with people of different politics, backgrounds, gender, views, feelings, and even accents and dialects. In a sense, they are exposed to people in ways that any novelist, poet, anthropologist, or journalist would love to be. They are usually some of the best guides that hold the keys to the hidden secrets, especially the ‘dirty secrets’ of the cities where they live and work.
”
”
Louis Yako (Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile)
“
I have noticed that many intellectuals turn themselves off the instant they are
confronted with the words witchcraft, magic, occultism, and religion, as if such
ideas exert a dangerous power that might weaken their rational faculties. Yet
many of these people maintain a generous openness about visionaries, poets, and
artists, some of whom may be quite mad according to “rational” standards. They
are fascinated by people of diverse professions and lifestyles who have historical
ties with, let us say, the Transcendentalists or the Surrealists, as long as the word
occult is not mentioned.
If Neo-Paganism were presented as an intellectual and artistic movement
whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of
whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of
sexuality, and the meaning of community, academics would flock to study it.
Political philosophers would write articles on the Neo-Pagans’ sense of wonder
and the minority vision they represent. Literary critics would compare the poetic
images in the small magazines published and distributed by the groups with
images in the writings of Blake and Whitman. Jungian psychologists would rush
to study the Neo-Pagans’ use of ancient archetypes and their love of the classics
and ancient lore.
But words like witch and pagan do not rest easily in the mind or on the
tongue. Although reporting on Paganism and Wicca has improved in the last
decade, pop journalists often still present a Neo-Paganism composed of strange
characters and weird rites
”
”
Margot Adler (Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America)
“
The Palestine laboratory can only thrive if enough nations believe in its underlying premise. It’s unsurprising that repressive regimes want to mimic Israeli repression, using Israeli technology to oppress their own unwanted or restive populations, but the Jewish state craves Western approval to fully realize its diplomatic and military potential. Aside from the US, Germany is arguably the greatest prize of all. Israel helped Germany rehabilitate its shattered image after World War II, while Berlin grants legitimacy to a country that brutally occupies the Palestinians (a nonpeople in the eyes of successive German governments). Germany purchasing increasing amounts of Israeli defense equipment is just one way it can atone for its historical guilt. When Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas visited Germany in August 2022 and spoke alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he accused Israel of committing “fifty Holocausts” against his people. The German establishment expressed outrage over the comment but the hypocrisy was clear; the Palestinians are under endless occupation but it’s only they who have to apologize. Germany has taken its love affair with Israel to dangerous, even absurd heights. The Deutsche Welle media organization updated its code of conduct in 2022 and insisted that all employees, when speaking on behalf of the organization or even in a personal capacity, must “support the right of Israel to exist” or face punishment, likely dismissal.40 After the Israeli military shot dead Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank city of Jenin in May 2022, German police banned a peaceful public vigil in Berlin because of what German authorities called an “immediate risk” of violence and anti-Semitic messaging. When protestors ignored this request and took to the streets to both commemorate Abu Akleh and Nakba Day, police arrested 170 people for expressing solidarity with Palestine. A Palestinian in Germany, Majed Abusalama, tweeted that he had been assaulted by the police. “I just left the hospital an hour ago with an arm sling to hold my shoulder after the German racist police almost dislocated my shoulder with their violent actions to us wearing Palestine Kuffiyas,” he wrote. “This is the new wave of anti-Palestinian everything in Berlin. Insane, right?” This followed years of anti-Palestinian incitement by the German political elite, from the German Parliament designating the BDS movement as anti-Semitic in 2019 to pressuring German institutions to refuse any space for pro-Palestinian voices, Jewish or Palestinian.41 The Palestinian intellectual Tariq Baconi gave a powerful speech in Berlin in May 2022 at a conference titled “Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the New Right.” He noted that “states like Germany have once again accepted Palestinians as collateral. Their oppression and colonization is a fair price to pay to allow Germany to atone for its past crimes.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
“
Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Media
— — —
* Words matter and mirror if your head is a dictionary of insight and your feelings are alive.
* Sure, fake news catches and succeeds attention, but for a while; however, it embraces disregard and unreliability forever.
* Media rule the incompetent minds and pointless believers.
* A real journalist only states, neither collaborates nor participates.
* The majority of journalists and anchors have the information only but not the sense of knowledge.
* When the media encourages and highlights the wrong ones, anti-democratic figures, criminals in uniform, and dictators in a supreme authority and brilliant context, sure, such a state never survives the breakdown of prosperity and civil rights, as well as human rights. Thus, the media is accountable and responsible for this as one of the democratic pillars.
*Media cannot be a football ground or a tool for anyone. It penetrates the elementary pillar of a state, it forms and represents the language of entire humanity within its perception of love, peace, respect, justice, harmony, and human rights, far from enmity and distinctions. Accordingly, it demonstrates its credibility and neutrality.
* When the non-Western wrongly criticizes and abuses its culture, religion, and values, the Western media highlights that often, appreciating in all dimensions. However, if the same one even points out only such subjects, as a question about Western distinctive attitude and role, the West flies and falls at its lowest level, contradicting its principles of neutrality and freedom of press and speech, which pictures, not only double standards but also double dishonesty with itself and readers. Despite that, Western media bother not to realize and feel ignominy and moral and professional stigma.
* Social Media has become the global dustbin of idiocy and acuity. It stinks now. Anyone is there to separate and recycle that.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean to constitute insulting, abusing, and harming deliberately in a distinctive and discriminative feature and context, whereas supporting such notions and attempts is a universal crime.
* Social media is a place where you share your favourite poetry, quotes, songs, news, social activities, and reports. You can like something, you can comment, and you can use humour in a civilised way. It is social media, but it is not a place to love or be loved. Any lover does not exist here, and no one is serious in this regard. Just enjoy yourself and do not try to fool anyone. If you do that, it means you are making yourself a fool; it is a waste of time, and it is your defeat too.
* I use social media only to devote and denote my thoughts voluntarily for the motivation of knowledge, not to earn money as greedy-minded.
* One should not take seriously the Social-Media fools and idiots.
* Today, on social media, how many are on duty?
* Journalists voluntarily fight for human rights and freedom of speech, whereas they stay silent for their rights and journalistic freedom on the will and restrictions of the boss of the media. Indeed, it verifies that The nearer the church, the farther from god.
* The abuse, insult, humiliation, and discrimination against whatever subject is not freedom of expression and writing; it is a violation and denial of global harmony and peace.
* Press freedom is one significant pillar of true democracy pillars, but such democracy stays deaf, dumb, and blind, which restricts or represses the media.
* Press and speech that deliberately trigger hatred and violation fall not under the freedom of press and speech since restrictions for morale and peace apply to everyone without exemption.
* Real press freedom is just a dream, which nowhere in the world becomes a reality; however, journalists stay dreaming that.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
Please don't expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.
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Linda Wolfe (Love Me to Death: A Journalist's Memoir of the Hunt for Her Friend's Killer)
“
the most shameful generation in the future will be the generation of journalists & media personalities. They will be ashamed of being a generation of those who are directly involved in genocide and nothing more than a propaganda tool.
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Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
“
People should understand one thing, nowhere is a journalist, what you see on your TV or Mobile screen, most of them are poor daily wages worker,
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Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
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Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor - or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back - that was more than enough.
I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons.
I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent - he asked. Watching movies - I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head - I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books.
So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It's ironic and super confusing really - I remember flying business class, but I didn't have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses.
Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn't have that luxury - I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly - she posted an interview with a dog owner instead - whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was.
Anyway, the point is this.
Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn't quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today.
There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out - night after night - spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that's the only secret - there is no other. Remember this - the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.
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Abhijit Naskar (Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch)
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Of course, Hasseborg wasn't alone. He had many compatriots who wrote just like him although with less intelligence other cultural journalists who had adopted the slick palaver of the moment. It's a language I've come to hate, because it admits no mystery and no ambiguity into its smug vocabulary, which arrogantly suggests that everything can be known.
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Siri Hustvedt (What I Loved)
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Kannada Books Purchase
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The Ten Commandments As Interpreted by Robin Palmetier
1. Don’t lie. Unless it’s to the police.
2. Don’t cheat your customers. Robin always made sure her dime bags were just a bit larger than any other dealers’ in the area, insuring loyalty in her clientele.
3. Always be polite. Especially to people who don’t like you, as it will piss them off.
4. Don’t steal from anyone. Anyone meaning people, leaving corporations and the IRS fair game.
5. Don’t kill. This one was also on the Bible’s list but, like many Christians, Robin had a long list of exceptions to this rule. It was okay to kill
sexual predators (unless they were born-again while serving time), liberal commentators, and anyone described as a "bad guy" by the greatest journalist and political leader of all time, Box News commentator Malcolm Wright. Unless, of course, Mr. Wright happened to be talking about one of her
personal friends, which, on occasion, he had.
6. Do not take the Lord’s name in vein. Shit, fuck, cock, pussy, bitch, bastard and their ilk were just fine. Goddamn’s and Jesus Christ’s were no-no’s.
7. Always repay a favor with a favor. Someone does something nice for you, do something nice right back. Being in someone’s debt is a dangerous thing.
8. Affirm that every word in the Bible is true, except the parts that clearly aren’t. Like that thing about eating shellfish—though supposedly an
abomination on par with adultery, murder, poly-cotton blends and paying interest on a mortgage—it could not possibly be God’s will. Robin loved
scallops and knew the good Lord would not wish to deny her this pleasure.
9. Discuss all decisions with God directly and listen closely to his advice. Sadly, when Praline tried this
himself he got nothing but an extended silence, while his mother always seemed to get very detailed instructions.
10. Always remember your mama loves you.
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Marshall Thornton (The Perils of Praline)
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Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan is a British journalist best known for his editorial work for the Daily Mirror from 1995 through 2004. He is also a successful author and television personality whose recent credits include a recurring role as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. A controversial member of the tabloid press during Diana’s lifetime, Piers Morgan established a uniquely close relationship with the Princess during the 1990s.
I mentioned I’d been in contact with her mother.
“Oh crikey, that sounds dangerous!”
“She’s a feisty woman, isn’t she?”
William giggled. “Granny’s great fun after a few gin and tonics.”
“Sh, William,” Diana said, giggling too. “My mother’s been a tremendous source of support to me. She never talks publicly; she’s just there for me.”
“And what about William’s other granny?”
“I have enormous respect for the Queen; she has been so supportive, you know. People don’t see that side of her, but I do all the time. She’s an amazing person.”
“Has she been good over the divorce?”
“Yes, very. I just want it over now so I can get on with my life. I’m worried about the attacks I will get afterward.”
“What attacks?”
“I just worry that people will try and knock me down once I am out on my own.”
This seemed unduly paranoid. People adored her.
I asked William how he was enjoying Eton.
“Oh, it’s great, thanks.”
“Do you think the press bother you much?”
“Not the British press, actually. Though the European media can be quite annoying. They sit on the riverbank watching me rowing with their cameras, waiting for me to fall in! There are photographers everywhere if I go out. Normally loads of Japanese tourists taking pictures. All saying “Where’s Prince William?’ when I’m standing right next to them.”
“How are the other boys with you?”
“Very nice. Though a boy was expelled this week for taking ecstasy and snuff. Drugs are everywhere, and I think they’re stupid. I never get tempted.”
“Does matron take any?” laughed Diana.
“No, Mummy, it gives her hallucinations.”
“What, like imagining you’re going to be king?” I said.
They both giggled again.
“Is it true you’ve got Pamela Anderson posters on your bedroom wall?”
“No! And not Cindy Crawford, either. They did both come to tea at the palace, though, and were very nice.”
William had been photographed the previous week at a party at the Hammersmith Palais, where he was mobbed by young girls.
I asked him if he’d had fun. “Everyone in the press said I was snogging these girls, but I wasn’t,” he insisted.
Diana laughed. “One said you stuck your tongue down her throat, William. Did you?”
“No, I did not. Stop it, Mummy, please. It’s embarrassing.”
He’d gone puce. It was a very funny exchange, with a flushed William finally insisting: “I won’t go to any more public parties; it was crazy. People wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Diana laughed again. “All the girls love a nice prince.”
I turned to more serious matters.
“Do you think Charles will become king one day?”
“I think he thinks he will,” replied Diana, “but I think he would be happier living in Tuscany or Provence, to be honest.”
“And how are you these days--someone told me you’ve stopped seeing therapists?”
“I have, yes. I stopped when I realized they needed more therapy than I did. I feel stronger now, but I am under so much pressure all the time. People don’t know what it’s like to be in the public eye, they really don’t.
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
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A Solution Waiting for a Problem Engineers tend to develop tools for the pleasure of developing tools, not to induce nature to yield its secrets. It so happens that some of these tools bring us more knowledge; because of the silent evidence effect, we forget to consider tools that accomplished nothing but keeping engineers off the streets. Tools lead to unexpected discoveries, which themselves lead to other unexpected discoveries. But rarely do our tools seem to work as intended; it is only the engineer’s gusto and love for the building of toys and machines that contribute to the augmentation of our knowledge. Knowledge does not progress from tools designed to verify or help theories, but rather the opposite. The computer was not built to allow us to develop new, visual, geometric mathematics, but for some other purpose. It happened to allow us to discover mathematical objects that few cared to look for. Nor was the computer invented to let you chat with your friends in Siberia, but it has caused some long-distance relationships to bloom. As an essayist, I can attest that the Internet has helped me to spread my ideas by bypassing journalists. But this was not the stated purpose of its military designer. The laser is a prime illustration of a tool made for a given purpose (actually no real purpose) that then found applications that were not even dreamed of at the time. It was a typical “solution looking for a problem.” Among the early applications was the surgical stitching of detached retinas. Half a century later, The Economist asked Charles Townes, the alleged inventor of the laser, if he had had retinas on his mind. He had not. He was satisfying his desire to split light beams, and that was that. In fact, Townes’s colleagues teased him quite a bit about the irrelevance of his discovery. Yet just consider the effects of the laser in the world around you: compact disks, eyesight corrections, microsurgery, data storage and retrieval—all unforeseen applications of the technology.* We build toys. Some of those toys change the world. Keep
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
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The next day, Sunday, June 14, Ahmadinejad held a press conference in the office of the president, on Pasteur Street in south Tehran. In the large white room with its decorative varnished wood panels, I sat among the dozens of Iranian and foreign journalists, taking notes and concentrating on remaining professional, even as I felt the anger inside me growing. The newly reelected president spent the first part of the press conference boasting about his win. When reporters asked about allegations of vote rigging, he barely batted an eye: Mousavi supporters “are like a football team that has lost a game but keeps on insisting that it has won,” he said. He flashed a malicious smile and added, “You’ve lost. Why don’t you accept it?
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Maziar Bahari (Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival)
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You're from Great Britain, so you have a bit of a different communication style. I grew up in a small town on the border of Queens, we have a bit of a different communication style.
One of the things I can't stand about this town is backstabbing. Where I grew up, we used to be FRONTSTABBERS - we ued to tell each other directly.
I live in Washington, do you live in Washington? (The BBC journalist: NO.) Okay, so you're lucky, because here, people say one thing to your face and another behind your back, so I don't know when this bill is going to be passed.'
LOVE THE GUY!!! one one one! (Krysia)
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Anthony Scaramucci
“
Clearly, not all Muslims are radical militants. Lebanese journalist Mahassen Haddara wrote a prayer to Jesus and His Mother in the wake of the martyrdom of Father Jacques Hamel in France in 2016: O Mary! Jesus! Do not delay! We beg you, Virgin Lady of the women of the world, ask Jesus to quickly come to us, because we are no longer able to endure what is going on … Our world, from Jerusalem to Iraq suffers from divisions … Our churches and mosques are desecrated, our priests are being killed, our children are being killed, and we are helpless … We beg you, Mother, help us with your prayer … Jesus, do not be late … Come to us, because we suffer.12 This prayer is a sign of hope that many conversions are ripe among Muslims. Islam in general has very little tenderness. The Muslim faith exacts submission, not love, not filial care, and certainly there is no mother to offer tenderness, hope, and healing in the face of harsh realities. Mary remains a bridge in mysterious ways. ______________ 1James L.
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Carrie Gress (The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis)
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Oh, loving, over-partial hearts!
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia)
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A North Carolina journalist neatly summed up the identity confusion: "If you think you're a redneck, you think you're hardworking, fun-loving, and independent. If you don't think you're a redneck, you think they're loud, obnoxious, bigoted, and shallow.
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Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
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Talking to a prisoner under duress can be the most shameful thing a journalist will ever do. I stared at him, willing him to look me in the eye. I held the blindfold on my lap so that he could clearly see it.
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Maziar Bahari (Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival)
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Journalists who cover Trump without being in the room will sometimes say that Trump’s crowd isn’t with him. But I can tell you, the crowd loves it. There is no rush for the exits, no howl of disgust. The first rally in the aftermath of the scuffle in Birmingham was as packed as the last—maybe more packed. People seem drawn to Trump’s rallies in the same way that they are drawn to a professional wrestling match, and as with a professional wrestling match, they seem divided between people who believe all they see and hear, and those who know it’s partially a performance. The scariest thing about being at a Trump rally is that you don’t know who believes it and who doesn’t.
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Katy Tur (Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History)
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Facebook is a ghetto for the creative part of society. It was created so the rest of society can function without having to pay attention to these weird folks that just keep yapping about stuff no one understands. The journalists and politicians are all on Twitter, producing the sort of soundbites the media love. Hence, the division between facebook and twitter essentially is the new class division, created by the powers-that-be to enforce the world to stay exactly as it is.
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Martijn Benders
“
I kiss Orion deeply, one last time. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in with me?” I ask. “I don’t think it’s going to help your case,” the raptor replies. “I mean, some people just don’t understand that love is real. You’ve gotta put yourself in there position. They’re so used to everything working a certain way, women kissing men, men kissing men… not men kissing dinosaurs.” I want to protest but I know that he’s right. Even the most liberal of juries is going to have a hard time with this muscular dinosaur sitting there in the courtroom while I argue my case. It’s better if we part ways here. “I’ll see you soon.” I tell him, my voice quaking. We both know that’s not going to happen, but we’re trying our best to pretend. “I love you,” Orion says to me one last time. “I love you, too” I assure him. We kiss again and then I finally muster up the discipline to pull away and push out through the car’s door. I stand up on the sidewalk before the courthouse as flash bulbs burst with blinding luminescence. I shield my eyes, stunned for a moment as I struggle to collect my bearings. “Mr. Tanner!” someone interjects, shoving a microphone in my face. “Is it true you hate unicorns?” “What?” I stammer. “We understand that your mission was funded off the profits of illegally traded unicorn tears, do you have anything to say to that?” “I mean…” I’m still trying to collect my bearings, struggling to sort through her words. “No, wait, yeah I do. That’s really bad, I didn’t know anything about it.” The reporter nods and repeats my words back to me. “Really bad… so you’re saying it’s not awful? Is that what you’re saying?” “No, I just…” I start. “Because it sounds like you’re not really coming out against the illegal trade of unicorn tears,” the reporter continues. “I literally heard about it five seconds ago,” I counter. “That sounds terrible, I don’t really know anything about it but it sounds really bad and I don’t support that.” The reporter nods. “Okay it’s really hard to understand you when you speak in code like this. Can you just answer the question? Do you or don’t you support bad guys doing bad things? Because you haven’t really come out against them.” “I don’t support bad guys,” I try to say as clearly as I possibly can. The reporter just stares at me blankly. “So you’re not going to come out against them?” Suddenly, someone from the mob pushes me from behind and I stumble forward. The entire gang of hungry journalists and newscasters has reached a tipping point and I realize now that if I don’t continue onward there is going to be a problem. I
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Chuck Tingle (Space Raptor Butt Trilogy)
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Harry was so exasperated by his frog experiments that one day he began venting to anyone who would listen. He even told his undergraduate class that he had spent countless hours just to prove that frogs were stupid. One of the students happened to be a reporter for the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, and the next day, Harry was in print: “Professor Harlow says that the frog is the dumbest of all animals.... Professor Harlow’s experiments showed that the frog does not seem to be able to learn anything at all.” It was a natural story for any journalist. The next day, one of the local papers rewrote the student version. It now carried the headline: “Frog Dumbest of Animals, Experimenters Discover.” That
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Deborah Blum (Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection)
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People who want to be journalists love drama.” “Never
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Delia James (A Familiar Tail (Witch's Cat Mystery, #1))
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Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. Philip Yancey1
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Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
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Groupon is a study of the hazards of pursuing scale and valuation at all costs. In 2010, Forbes called it the “fastest growing company ever” after its founders raised $135 million in funding, giving Groupon a valuation of more than $1 billion after just 17 months.5 The company turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and went public in 2011 with one of the biggest IPOs since Google’s in 2004.6 It was one of the original unicorns. However, the business model had serious problems. Groupon sometimes sold so many Daily Deals that participating businesses were overwhelmed . . . even crippled. Other businesses accused Groupon of strong-arming them to sign up for Daily Deals. Customers started to view the group discount (the company’s bread and butter) as a sign that a participating business was desperate. Businesses stopped signing up. Journalists suggested that Groupon was prioritizing customer acquisition over retention — growth over value — and that it had gone public before it had a solid, proven business model.7 Groupon is still a player, with just over $3 billion in annual revenue in 2015. But its stock has fallen from $26 a share to about $4 today, and it has withdrawn from many international markets. Also revealing is that the company is suing IBM for patent infringement, something that will not create customer value.8 Many promising startups have paid the price for rushing to scale. We can see clues to potential future failures in the recent “down rounds” (stock purchases priced at a lower valuation than those of previous investors) hitting companies like Foursquare, Gilt Group, Jet, Jawbone, and Technorati. In their rush to build scale, executives and founders search for shortcuts to sustainable, long-term revenue growth.
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Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
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Trump’s ascendancy brought out the liberal technocrat in many people. ‘I love America. It’s Americans I hate,’ wrote Tim Kreider, an essayist and cartoonist, a few weeks after Trump won.42 ‘[They’re] pathetically dumb and gullible, uncritical consumers of any disinformation that confirms their biases, easy dupes for any demagogue who promises to bring back the factories and keep the brown people down . . . But I don’t believe all Trump voters are ignorant, or bigoted; most of them are just evil – evil being defined not as anything so glamorous as beheading journalists or gunning down grade schoolers, but simply as not much caring about other people’s suffering.
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Edward Luce (The Retreat of Western Liberalism)
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Liberals always have had a love-hate relationship with the Constitution—they love it when they can use it to abort babies or let gay people get married. They hate it when its language gets in the way of their big-government schemes, like censoring conservative media outlets or investigating troublesome, truth-telling journalists. They especially hate the fact that the Constitution explicitly—yes, explicitly—protects gun owners. To get around that inconvenient truth, the left does what it does best: It denies that things say what they actually say, or mean what they actually mean. Or as everyone’s favorite sexual harasser once famously put it, “It depends on what the meaning of is is.” The gun grabbers’ useful idiot, Sen. Chuck Schumer, once claimed that his fellow Democrats needed to admit that there was such as thing as a Second Amendment that gave people “a constitutional right to bear arms.” But before we think Senator Schumer was actually on our side, he went on in the same breath to call for a “compromise” that allowed the left to ban a whole bunch of different guns and thus infringe on that aforementioned constitutional right to bear arms.
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Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
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Shockingly (to maybe only me), being in a relationship has done the opposite of limiting me. It's emboldened me to try something much scarier than I would have tried if I were alone. Maybe Rachel the Hasidic journalist was right: love frees you to be the person you actually are.
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Kristin Newman
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Why is it so important to have fun? Because if you love your work (or your activism or your family time), then you’ll want to do more of it. You’ll think about it before you go to sleep and as soon as you wake up; your mind is always in gear. When you’re that engaged, you’ll run circles around other people even if they are more naturally talented. From what we’ve seen personally, the best predictor of success among young economists and journalists is whether they absolutely love what they do. If they approach their job like—well, a job—they aren’t likely to thrive. But if they’ve somehow convinced themselves that running regressions or interviewing strangers is the funnest thing in the world, you know they have a shot.
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Anonymous
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But ‘Top 10 by 2010’ was simple and clear and very catchy. The more we looked at it, the more we liked the sound of it. This simple message would be the driving force behind TCS and the motivator for each of its employees. While we embraced this vision internally, we had not yet announced it publicly. But the media had got wind of it and we got our first taste of the ways of journalists and their love for headlines (by then we were public). They chose to interpret ‘10 x 10’ as $10 billion by 2010, an inaccuracy that we had to quickly correct.
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S. Ramadorai (The TCS Story ...and Beyond)
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But Unspinning the Spin is a more comprehensive and multidisciplinary guide to words and phrases—their meanings, sources, backgrounds, suggested uses, and alternatives—than has been published so far. It’s a guide for journalists and editors in this and other countries, for bloggers creating their own media and for government officials creating policy, for students and teachers at all levels, for activists, workers in communication fields, and for any reader who loves the English language.
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Rosalie Maggio (Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language)
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Real love—our love of God and our love of each other—must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.
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Lee Strobel (The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity)
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face.” I sat spellbound. Here it was — the image of grace I had been seeking: an aspiring father bringing unconditional acceptance to a child who had absolutely nothing to offer, no accolades or accomplishments, just herself in all of her vulnerability and scars and weaknesses. My eyes moistened. This is the love of a dad. Maybe — just maybe — this is the love of a Father.
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Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
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Journalists, bless our black little hearts, are petty and vindictive and love to flog our hallowed journalism ethics whenever there’s some momentary advantage and/or amusement value in doing so.
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John Scalzi (Subterranean Scalzi Super Bundle)
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God didn’t love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God.
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Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
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Dickie Arbiter
Former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II Dickie Arbiter is a British broadcaster and journalist. He has covered royalty, heads of state, and other international personalities for more than thirty years, and his unique access to so many important figures of recent history makes him one of the most experienced commentators in Britain. He is currently in high demand throughout the world as a lecturer and commentator on radio and television.
I traveled a great deal with her at home and abroad, and we spent many hours in each other’s company. We occasionally swam together early in the morning or late at night, and we had many laughs--she had a great sense of humor. She was intoxicating, and any man she met immediately fell in love with her--including me.
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
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While Amanda may be considered as the “official candidate” whose breeding and background made her eminently acceptable at Court, the Prince was also conducting a stormy relationship with Anna Wallace, the daughter of a Scottish landowner whom he had met while fox hunting in November 1979. She was the latest of a long line of girlfriends, drawn for the most part from the upper reaches of the aristocracy, who had appeared on his romantic horizon. However Anna, fiery, wilful and impulsive, was temperamentally unsuitable for the regulated routine of royalty. Not for nothing was she known as “Whiplash Wallace”. Prince Charles, a man who by his own admission fell in love easily, pressed his suit even though his advisors told him that she had other boy-friends.
Their relationship became so serious that, according to at least one account, he asked her to marry him. She is said to have turned him down but that rebuff did little to dampen his ardour. In May they were discovered by journalists lying on a blanket by the river Dee on the Queen’s estate at Balmoral. The Prince was furious at this intrusion into his private life and authorized his friend, Lord Tryon, who was present at the picnic to shout a four letter word at the journalists concerned.
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Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
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Patrick Jephson
As the first and only private secretary to Diana during her life, Patrick Jephson was one of the closest people to the Princess throughout her international charity and diplomatic career. He is also a notable broadcaster and journalist and has contributed to many major British newspapers, including the Times, the Observer, and the Daily Mail. His writing credits include Shadows of a Princess and Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana, and several of his books have been international bestsellers.
As a nation, the British like to remember things, especially things that make them feel special. Trying to forget Diana is a tall order--and not just for those of us who knew her well. What happened to her during those sixteen years was drama on a Shakespearean scale--just think of love, betrayal, sacrifice, beauty, and death. The curtain may have come down on the tragedy ten years ago. But our farewell to Diana is not yet complete. It probably never will be.
It’s a memory that is renewed each time we see a photograph of her sons. William in particular carries the blessing (or the burden) of Diana’s camera-friendly looks. Her DNA in our future heads of state is now an ineradicable biological fact. Time may fade that reality. But nobody can deny it.
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
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Rarely in history have so many people quoted the United States Constitution and yet seemed deliberately obtuse to its meaning than have the members of the United States Congress. Why that still comes as a surprise probably says more about me than it does about them. Let’s face it. Liberals always have had a love-hate relationship with the Constitution—they love it when they can use it to abort babies or let gay people get married. They hate it when its language gets in the way of their big-government schemes, like censoring conservative media outlets or investigating troublesome, truth-telling journalists. They especially hate the fact that the Constitution explicitly—yes, explicitly—protects gun owners. To get around that inconvenient truth, the left does what it does best: It denies that things say what they actually say, or mean what they actually mean. Or
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Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
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In both roles, as journalist and as organizer, I'd learn that it's possible to fall in love with a revolution—then doubt it, fight with it, lose faith in it, and return with a sense of humor and a harder, lasting love. I would have to learn the same thing about church when I was much older, and it would be no easier.
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Sara Miles (Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion)
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She had begun penning these ideas in a series of journalistic pieces in the Spectator. ‘These questions depend on another’, she explained, ‘what sort of creature are we trying to train? What is he capable of?’ ‘Man is at least a spiritual animal.’ In human life, eating and drinking are transformed into fellowship; sex into love; the herd into society. And inquisitiveness ‘has carried the human mind into the heart of the atom and along the flaming ramparts of the universe beyond the Milky Way’!
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Sandie Lindsay
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Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors . . ." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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Jealousy is a horrible emotion, envy even worse. * * * Cat likes to think of herself as a nice person. But right now she is sitting in the back of a taxi snarling every time she thinks of Louise, and the glory now being heaped upon her since she got an exclusive interview with Polly Goldman, in which the soap star talked about her drug bust. “Louise isn’t even a bloody news journalist,” Cat mutters to herself, as the cabby slides the glass panel open, half-turning his head and shouting: “What was that love? Did you say something?” “Nothing.” Cat attempts a bright smile before sinking back in her seat and muttering some more. She wouldn’t mind if it had been anyone else on the women’s desk who had scored an exclusive, but Louise! She isn’t even staff, she’s freelance for God’s sake. Not a full-time freelance like Cat, but God knows she’d like to be. As soon as Louise walked into the office, Cat saw how ambitious she was, willing to do whatever it took to get a story. She didn’t get an exclusive with Polly Goldman by asking for it, she doorstepped her as if she worked for the News of the
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Jane Green (Cat and Jemima J: A Short Story)
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Jealousy is a horrible emotion, envy even worse. * * * Cat likes to think of herself as a nice person. But right now she is sitting in the back of a taxi snarling every time she thinks of Louise, and the glory now being heaped upon her since she got an exclusive interview with Polly Goldman, in which the soap star talked about her drug bust. “Louise isn’t even a bloody news journalist,” Cat mutters to herself, as the cabby slides the glass panel open, half-turning his head and shouting: “What was that love? Did you say something?” “Nothing.” Cat attempts a bright smile before sinking back in her seat and muttering some more. She wouldn’t mind if it had been anyone else on the women’s desk who had scored an exclusive, but Louise! She isn’t even staff, she’s freelance for God’s sake. Not a full-time freelance like Cat, but God knows she’d like to be. As soon as Louise walked into the office, Cat saw how ambitious she was, willing to do whatever it took to get a story. She didn’t get an exclusive with Polly Goldman by asking for it, she doorstepped her as if she worked for the News of the World rather than the Daily Gazette! When the story came out, everyone gathered excitedly round Louise asking how she did it. She said she sat on the doorstep overnight, pressing the intercom every hour, explaining to Polly Goldman how her mortification over being caught could be assuaged by offering an exclusive to the Daily Gazette. By morning, poor Polly Goldman, exhausted by being woken up every hour by this woman who clearly wasn’t going away, reluctantly asked her in, and boom! The story was Louise’s, complete with descriptions of the bags under Polly’s eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * *
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Jane Green (Cat and Jemima J)
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Jealousy is a horrible emotion, envy even worse. * * * Cat likes to think of herself as a nice person. But right now she is sitting in the back of a taxi snarling every time she thinks of Louise, and the glory now being heaped upon her since she got an exclusive interview with Polly Goldman, in which the soap star talked about her drug bust. “Louise isn’t even a bloody news journalist,” Cat mutters to herself, as the cabby slides the glass panel open, half-turning his head and shouting: “What was that love? Did you say something?” “Nothing.” Cat attempts a bright smile before sinking back in her seat and muttering some more. She wouldn’t mind if it had been anyone else on the women’s desk who had scored an exclusive, but Louise! She isn’t even staff, she’s freelance for God’s sake. Not a full-time freelance like Cat, but God knows she’d like to be. As soon as Louise walked into the office, Cat saw how ambitious she was, willing to do whatever it took to get a story. She didn’t get an exclusive with Polly Goldman by asking for it, she doorstepped her as if she worked for the News of the World rather than the Daily Gazette! When the story came out, everyone gathered excitedly round Louise asking how she did it. She said she sat on the doorstep overnight, pressing the intercom every hour, explaining to Polly Goldman how her mortification over being caught could be assuaged by offering an exclusive to the Daily Gazette. By morning, poor Polly Goldman, exhausted by being woken up every hour by this woman who clearly wasn’t going away, reluctantly asked her in, and boom! The story was Louise’s, complete with descriptions of the bags under Polly’s eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * * Cat watches as her cab winds
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Jane Green (Cat and Jemima J)
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Clergymen and journalists have smeared the term “love” with so much sentimentality that even its echo stinks.
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Nicolás Gómez Dávila (Don Colacho's Aphorisms)
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Jealousy is a horrible emotion, envy even worse. * * * Cat likes to think of herself as a nice person. But right now she is sitting in the back of a taxi snarling every time she thinks of Louise, and the glory now being heaped upon her since she got an exclusive interview with Polly Goldman, in which the soap star talked about her drug bust. “Louise isn’t even a bloody news journalist,” Cat mutters to herself, as the cabby slides the glass panel open, half-turning his head and shouting: “What was that love? Did you say something?” “Nothing.” Cat attempts a bright smile before sinking back in her seat and muttering some more. She wouldn’t mind if it had been anyone else on the women’s desk who had scored an exclusive, but Louise! She isn’t even staff, she’s freelance for God’s sake. Not a full-time freelance like Cat, but God knows she’d like to be. As soon as Louise walked into the office, Cat saw how ambitious she was, willing to do whatever it took to get a story. She didn’t get an exclusive with Polly Goldman by asking for it, she doorstepped her as if she worked for the News of the World rather than the Daily Gazette! When the story came out, everyone gathered excitedly round Louise asking how she did it. She said she sat on the doorstep overnight, pressing the intercom every hour, explaining to Polly Goldman how her mortification over being caught could be assuaged by offering an exclusive to the Daily Gazette. By morning, poor Polly Goldman, exhausted by being woken up every hour by this woman who clearly wasn’t going away, reluctantly asked her in, and boom! The story was Louise’s, complete with descriptions of the bags under Polly’s eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * * Cat watches
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Jane Green (Cat and Jemima J)
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A movie screening of Before Midnight? A Richard Linklater classic for sure, but watching a movie with a group doesn’t mean you connect with anyone; the only people talking are on-screen. That one goes in the bottom-right corner—high likelihood she’d enjoy it, low likelihood of interaction.
Eventually, we discovered a book club discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates, the award-winning journalist who writes about culture, politics, and social issues. Ding-ding-ding. Alicia was a huge fan of his work. And book clubs are all about interaction.
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Logan Ury (How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love)
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In short, our journalists do not realise that the human race has any respect for coherency of mind. It is not strange that their world has also lost all respect for that other sort of coherency which was called integrity.
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Dale Ahlquist (The Story of the Family: G. K. Chesterton on the Only State that Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens)
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From what we’ve seen personally, the best predictor of success among young economists and journalists is whether they absolutely love what they do. If they approach their job like—well, a job—they aren’t likely to thrive.
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Steven D. Levitt (Think Like a Freak)
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H. L. Mencken, a journalist in the 1920s, saw this whipping-up of fear as endemic to politics. “The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary.
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Jack Kornfield (No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are)
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I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not - to smile sweetly all the time - just to get recognition and love. I won't play the whore for anyone, least of all for journalists. I can't do that. I want to be loved, yes, but the way I am and not the way people would like me to be. I have to be allowed to be myself.
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Reinhold Messner (My Life at the Limit)
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It has been said that what we face with this climate crisis is harder than winning World War II, achieving civil rights, defeating bacterial infection and sending a man to the moon . . . combined. So let’s get super duper clear, my dear friends: this is a human despair crisis.
Rebecca Solnit: “The scale is not like anything human beings have faced and journalists have reported on, except perhaps the threat of all-out nuclear war.” She then added the whopper caveat that nuclear war was something that “might happen, not something that is happening.” I add this: with nuclear war, we all agreed the threat was real and we talked about it openly. We weren’t fighting the science on it.
Sure, we’ve had climate change before. And, yep, the planet survived. But this is not the point. No doubt the planet will survive again. There’s just one small problem that we get distracted from. This time, we probably won’t. Or at least, our lives as we know and love them won’t….Scientists and activists have no vested interest in making this shit up. There is no money to be made and no power to be gained from spreading information about the worth of sustainable energy, or consuming less. I said this to someone who challenged me at a dinner party as to my motives behind engaging in climate activism: “We would much rather be at the beach.” Fair point, they replied.
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Sarah Wilson (This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World)
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A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. — Journalist Mignon McLaughlin
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Archie Comics (Archie: The Married Life Book 1 (The Married Life Series))
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The radical acceptance of the accumulations of our lives is born in the giving up, the acknowledgment of the artifice. It is what journalist Ken Fuson exudes in his self-penned obituary. Having been unshackled from pretense by a public struggle with addiction and freed from performance by impending bodily death, Fuson delivered a remarkable eulogy for himself: He attended the university’s famous School of Journalism, which is a clever way of saying, “almost graduated but didn’t.” . . . In 1996, Ken took the principled stand of leaving the Register because The Sun in Baltimore offered him more money. Three years later, having blown most of that money at Pimlico Race Track, he returned to the Register, where he remained until 2008. For most of his life, Ken suffered from a compulsive gambling addiction that nearly destroyed him. But his church friends, and the loving people at Gamblers Anonymous, never gave up on him. Ken last placed a bet on Sept. 5, 2009. He died clean. He hopes that anyone who needs help will seek it, which is hard, and accept it, which is even harder. Miracles abound.9 Fuson evinces true authenticity, something close to real freedom, and it is beautiful. His prose is not a parade of accomplishments but a catalog of embarrassing details and defeats—the kind that makes a reader’s heart beam with appreciation, identification, laughter, and hope.
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David Zahl (Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself))
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For some people, popping an ice cube into their mouth or eating a big bite of wasabi helps shock their systems into paying attention to a sensory experience. A journalist I knew had a lot of success tapping his face and hands. Lacey loves to focus on the rhythmic feeling of her feet hitting the pavement during a long walk or taking a swim in icy water. Another friend melts into a happy puddle when she covers herself with her weighted blanket.
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Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
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RECIPE FOR MURDER 1 stocky man who abuses his wife 1 small tender wife 1 medium-sized tough woman in love with the wife 1 double-barrelled shotgun 1 small Karoo town marinated in secrets 3 bottles of Klipdrift brandy 3 little ducks 1 bottle of pomegranate juice 1 handful of chilli peppers 1 mild gardener 1 fire poker 1 red-hot New Yorker 7 Seventh-day Adventists (prepared for The End of the World) 1 hard-boiled investigative journalist 1 soft amateur detective 2 cool policemen 1 lamb 1 handful of red herrings and suspects mixed together Pinch of greed Throw all the ingredients into a big pot and simmer slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon for a few years. Add the ducks, chillies and brandy towards the end and turn up the heat.
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Sally Andrew (Recipes for Love and Murder (Tannie Maria Mystery, #1))