Janet Malcolm quotes

" Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. " # Journalism and Journalists # Confidence # Loneliness

" The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others. " # Journalism and Journalists # Death and Dying # Danger

" If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph. " # Photography # Love # Painters and Painting

" Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation. " # Quotations # Loyalty # Journalism and Journalists