“The distinguished dead are clay in the hands of writers, and chance determines the shapes that their characters assume in the books… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
“The writer ultimately tires of the subject's self-serving story, and substitutes a story of his own.” — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
“As you no doubt gathered, I do not devote the care to word selection and organization in my letters that I do… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
“The subject of a piece of writing has not suffered the tension and anxiety endured by the subject of the "Eichmann experiment"… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
“Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share Image
The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is. — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
“The writer ultimately tires of the subject's self-serving story, and substitutes a story of his own.” — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
The journalistic 'I' is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
“The subject of a piece of writing has not suffered the tension and anxiety endured by the subject of the "Eichmann experiment" (as it… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others. — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
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… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
“Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
You could say that any book that takes a position is not fair, unless you keep saying, 'On the one hand, on the other...'… — Janet Malcolm Copy Share
