Zitat des Tages von Janet Malcolm:
The journalistic 'I' is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.
Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.
If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.
Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but, in fact, childish trust and impetuosity are far more common.
Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
People talk in ungrammatical, unwriterly ways.
Keeping one's eyes open, listening, watching, being quiet, adopting some of the techniques of the psychoanalyst in talking to people, will bring you that surface from which something more comes.
The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography's status as a popular genre.
Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.
I don't want to manipulate actuality; I want to record it.
The journalist cannot create his subjects any more than the analyst can create his patients.
'The Rachel Maddow Show' is a piece of sleight of hand presented as a cable news show. It is TV entertainment at its finest.
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.
Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.
The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.
My living room has an oak-wood floor, Persian carpets, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a large ficus and large fern, a fireplace with a group of photographs and drawings over it, a glass-top coffee table with a bowl of dried pomegranates on it, and sofas and chairs covered in off-white linen.
My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.
