Leslie Cockburn

“Are you a journalist?” “I’m a doctor.” “Good. We need doctors, Wallahi .” Sadoon scowled. “Journalists only tell lies and smuggle carpets.”

— Leslie Cockburn

“But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.”

— Leslie Cockburn

When you do a piece of journalism, you may have to cut away 95 percent of what you are experiencing.

— Leslie Cockburn

When I was in London at NBC, I was the lowest man on the totem pole. I would go to diplomatic receptions…

— Leslie Cockburn

After reading Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad when I was a student at Yale, I wanted to live in the world they…

— Leslie Cockburn

When I was at graduate school in London, I began working at NBC News, which had a thriving documentary unit.

— Leslie Cockburn

When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its different…

— Leslie Cockburn

“There are a lot of people missing in Iraq. Just the other day I heard of somebody asking $250,000 ransom for an…

— Leslie Cockburn

“Death was sweetened for the martyrs by the promise of 72 virgins waiting in paradise. She had researched the 72 virgins. The…

— Leslie Cockburn

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

— Leslie Cockburn

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

— Leslie Cockburn

“You can take me to Petra, and sing for me in the ruins.” “Insha’Allah.”

— Leslie Cockburn

I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News.

— Leslie Cockburn

Journalism, for me, has always been a calling. There are things that must be exposed to the light, truths that must be…

— Leslie Cockburn

“She had done her residency at LA County Hospital, where the CT machines were so old she had to mark off the…

— Leslie Cockburn

“Why did you become a journalist?” “Better than working for a living.”

— Leslie Cockburn

“The lapis lazuli worry beads, draped over his rear view mirror, swung back and forth like the hips of Scheherazade, Mohammed's favorite…

— Leslie Cockburn

“Mohammed ignored the abuse. What did Ahmed know? It had been years since anyone had studied music in Paris or Seville on…

— Leslie Cockburn

“Yes, I know, I’m only an artist. What would I know about the dark side of Baghdad?”

— Leslie Cockburn

I started making little films with a 16 mm camera as an undergraduate at Yale. My first job out of college was…

— Leslie Cockburn

When you are on assignment, you stick to the facts, limit your vision, and often cut out the most revealing material. There…

— Leslie Cockburn

I have a great spouse, Andrew Cockburn, who's also a journalist.

— Leslie Cockburn

It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street.

— Leslie Cockburn

“Lee was conscious that Nizar watched her trying to adjust her abaya . She knew everyone could tell a Western woman by…

— Leslie Cockburn