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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
I firmly believe that any good journalist must essentially be temperamentally an outsider. I don't think full sense of belonging and security is conducive to creativity.
Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world.
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
I assume that - because you can get degrees in journalism from very reputable universities - I assume that people can be trained to be journalists. I've never been entirely certain that anyone can be trained to be a novelist in the same way.
I think if you look at the failure of journalism in the modern age, then I don't want to be called a journalist.
I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.
I have a journalism degree, but I'd rather be the person who is being written about rather than the person who is writing.
Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.