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.
quote by Graham Greene
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.
quote by Leo C. Rosten
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.
quote by John Sladek
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
quote by John Fowles
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.
quote by Karl Kraus
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Journalists Who Lie
Journalists who lie
Stealing the money
Prospering with spite
Hate-in-a-hurry
Oh, see how :
Theyre only trying to make their name
By spreading biz myth-lies
About the ones whove made their name
Stick in the knife
Stick in the knife
Journalists who lie
The truth is, it happens
Praise, then crucify
Just follow this pattern
And see how :
Theyre only trying to make their name
By spreading sickening lies
About the ones whove made their name
Mate, give us the knife
Give us the knife
Journalists who lie
So happy in malice
Rock star - out of line
So happy in malice
Oh ...
Journalists who lie
So sick and belaboured
They only want to be favoured
They only want to be favoured
See how :
Theyre only trying to make their name
With unprovable lies
About the ones
Whove made their name
In the black hole
Of your soul
Still bargaining away the truth
So easily
Truth
Journalists who lie
Stealing the money
Prospering with spite
And hate-in-a-hurry
Journalists who lie
The truth is, it happens
Praise, then crucify
Just follow this pattern
Journalists who lie
So sick and belaboured
They want to be favoured
They only want to be favoured
song performed by by Morrissey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!
quote by Jonathan Coe
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.
quote by Ken Follett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
quote by William Golding
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Some of our best journalists take themselves even more seriously than the politicians they write about.
quote by R.W. Apple, Jr.
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
We have to protect all journalists, and journalists have to be allowed to do their jobs.
quote by Amy Goodman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Write Yours Now
The 'Journal of Death Studies' for April2004
(maybe you read it? It's in the
hospital library, top shelf
just out of wheelchair reach,
on the shelf labelled 'Reference')
observed that
nonfiction writers tend to die, factually, at sixty-eight;
novelists tie it all up at sixty-six;
playwrights lower the curtain at sixty-three,
and poets close their stanzas at sixty-two.
Well, thanks..
six years - looking on the bright side -
for your favourite biographer to write you up;
four years for novelists to borrow
your untidy life and win the Booker Prize;
a year for playwrights to emulate
the bitter dialogue of your later,
less romantic household years
with less fear of being sued.
Those whom the gods love, die young,
said the optimistic poet
shortly before he died.
for PoHo, who gave me the damn book with the reference in.
And yes, I wondered too..
poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
It's not the first time that I speak with American journalists. I've had meetings with many different newspapers and stations, and I've ha - never had a problem with meeting with American journalists.
quote by Hassan Nasrallah
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists.
quote by John McCarthy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Telling Stories
There is fiction in the space between
The lines on your page of memories
Write it down but it doesnt mean
Youre not just telling stories
There is fiction in the space between
You and me
There is fiction in the space between
You and reality
You will do and say anything
To make your everyday life
Seem less mundane
There is fiction in the space between
You and me
Theres a science fiction in the space between
You and me
A fabrication of a grand scheme
Where I am the scary monster
I eat the city and as I leave the scene
In my spaceship I am laughing
In your remembrance of your bad dream
Theres no one but you standing
Leave the pity and the blame
For the ones who do not speak
You write the words to get respect and compassion
And for posterity
You write the words and make believe
There is truth in the space between
There is fiction in the space between
You and everybody
Give us all what we need
Give us one more sad sordid story
But in the fiction of the space between
Sometimes a lie is the best thing
Sometimes a lie is the best thing
song performed by by Tracy Chapman
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The recent history of Ukraine is replete with dead journalists, beaten journalists, news agencies being shut down, and politicians being injured or killed. Most are killed in mysterious auto accidents.
quote by Bob Schaffer
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
She of the Heavenly Happiness
No-one knew what subsequently became of her
after he went so dramatically, and after all those goings-on.
He got all the headlines.
The police didn't even bother
to take her in for questioning.
There was talk of riots,
they needed every spare man.
But the story never quite went away.
You know how it is with journalists -
we file it away for a rainy day,
then it sticks in our mind
for when we retire and write a best-seller, I wish...
I doubt we'll ever know the truth of it;
but every now and then
some nutter with a convincing sighting
makes a free gift to journalists
with no personal responsibility for us either.
France, Spain, Italy, gipsy communities -
you name it, they know her
except she was never there that day.
The story among her friends is
that she went on a long Mediterranean cruise
with two other ladies.
Yet there's no account of their returning
and there are stories that they all separated
and took up new careers in foreign places
where they acquired new names, locally
so the trail's gone cold.
But stories like his, and hers,
and whether they - well, you know -
never quite go away
and the part she played
though brief, sure was dramatic, so
it's made her a role model for those women -
and there have been many over the years -
whose lives have taken a turn for the worse
(no man can know what it's like
for a woman to hav e to sell herself)
and who see in her story
a hope of life's big U-turn
and all that we really hope for.
God knows we all need one.
Could be a Lloyd-Webber musical,
come to think of it.
After all, she was there
at one of the world's big events
- that most of the media
strangely missed...
Maddalena - it's a beautiful name
in Italian.
And then there's that delicate cake
that Proust dipped in his tea.
There's a place in Italy
where they take her story very seriously,
because some local writer
turned it into a classic of hope for the socially rejected;
a rather 19th century theme.
The critics panned it; but does it matter
whether it's truth or fiction,
if it goes so deep, that it's true in a different sort of way?
It's called 'Maddalena of the Heavenly Happiness';
it sounds better in Italian.
no, it never got translated into English -
it's rather
Catholic
if you know what I mean.
Though it actually took place
in the Near East
or whatever it was called then.
poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
I am satisfied that all politicians were meant to be journalists and all journalists meant to be politicians.
quote by Owen Arthur
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
I Write And Write And Write And Write
I WRITE AND WRITE AND WRITE AND WRITE
I write and write and write and write
I write and write and write and write
I write.
And all this writing and all these words and all I am
Forever unheard.
poem by Shalom Freedman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Control Domination By Violence Alias CIA World Net
Why does the covert
Cream Icing Agency
insist on killing writers
journalists novelists
with a mandate necessary
a pulse world conscience
in phony fake suicides
hardly original Old Bean?
Or creative use of talent
why not flip recruit a few?
Makes a nice change from
megalomaniac dictators
corrupt foreign governments
renowned for suppression
torture corruption civil rights
violations of their own citizens.
The free pen is indeed
mightier than the sword
but you already know
that wet work G Man.
Is that why your agency fears
independent voice of integrity?
Ethics streets above dirty deeds
black ops covert secret CIA policy.
Integrity writers must reclaim
high moral sacrosanct ground
government policy ends justifies
means left so dismally vacant.
poem by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
What I want to write
What I want to write
I could not write.
I could not write
Tiger tiger cat cat
And the difference they behaved.
I could not write
The sky and its fall
On our forehead.
What I want to write
I could not write.
I write how I loved
How flower blosom
How fruit ripe
How stream flow.
I could not know
How I write
And I write
What I want to write
I could not write.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!