Journalism is literature in a hurry.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
He types his labored column—weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it’s a paragraph in my column.
—Don Marquis (1878–1937) American Humorist, Journalist, Author
Our job is like a baker’s work—his rolls are tasty as long as they’re fresh; after two days they’re stale; after a week, they’re covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist
In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.
—Harold Evans (1925–2020) British-American Journalist, Writer
If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
—Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American Journalist
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
—Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist
It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American Christian Theologian
I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist’s code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don’t have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.
—P. J. O’Rourke (1947–2022) American Journalist, Political Satirist
The real news is bad news.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.
—Claud Cockburn (1904–81) English Journalist
Journalism is the entertainment business.
—Frank Herbert (1920–86) American Science Fiction Writer
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney
Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
—A. J. Liebling (1904–63) American Journalist, Press Critic
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
—Horace Greeley (1811–72) American Journalist, Author
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
Journalism consists largely in saying “Lord James is dead” to people who never knew Lord James was alive.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Write the news as if your very life depended on it. It does!
—Heywood Hale Broun (1918–2001) American Journalist, Commentator, Actor
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.
—Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
Journalism is organized gossip.
—Edward Eggleston (1837–1902) American Historian, Novelist
I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.
—James Boswell (1740–95) Scottish Biographer, Diarist
A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.
—Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) German Chancellor, Prime Minister
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
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