One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.

I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.

One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.

A little anger is a good thing if it isn't on your own behalf, if it's for others deserving of your anger, your empathy.

Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters.

I had a great editor, Rebecca Corbett, from the time I was a city reporter right through to the years I worked on the 'Sun's' enterprise reporting team.

It seems that in Baltimore, one of the most violent cities in America, jurors are far more reluctant to convict criminal defendants than in the suburban enclaves that ring the city.

It's been said that no man is a hero to a newspaperman, and I spent too many years as an ink-stained wretch.

On a practical level I'm a TV producer and storyteller who's gone about as long as you can go without achieving a mass audience.

The trick to making a story matter is that every now and then, somebody you care about has to go. If it's somebody that you don't care about, then it doesn't really have - the stakes aren't there. But if you do that every now and then, then the story matters to people. And there are actual stakes involved, emotional stakes.

The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies.

There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed.

There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.

While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point.

Awakening into love is a lifelong path.

Authenticity is an alignment between your beliefs, your desires and your choices in the world. Desires change throughout the course of a life, but agreement between ideals, aspirations and deeds is key to a life of peace, happiness and success.

Health is a return to our memory of wholeness.

My favorite thing is still journalism. I'm almost 50. This has been my life ever since I was in college.

I suggest that what we want to do is not to leave to posterity a great institution, but to leave behind a great tradition of journalism ably practiced in our time.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

I don't think Fox News or Rush Limbaugh need Clinton it turns out. I think there's a hunger out there for - whether it's on the left or right - a more lively and provocative type of political journalism. I think Salon and Fox on the other side have both benefited from that.

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.

If anyone was talking about journalism in the '50s - it was Edward R.Murrow.

In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals - Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine - which set the agenda.

The Defense Department's plan to ban newspaper reporters from pool coverage of military operations is incredible. It reveals the administration to be out of touch with journalism, reality and the First Amendment.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism.

Journalism as theater is what TV news is.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

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.

Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.

I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

Journalism is in fact history on the run.

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

Contradictory to my religion, I think, is journalism.

There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it.

I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.

I recognize that I had a good deal of good luck in my life. I came along at a time when it was pretty easy to get a job in journalism. I went to work at CBS News when I was about 22, and within a year or so was reporting on the air.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.

I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.

Needless, heedless, wanton and deliberate injury of the sort inflicted by Life's picture story is not an essential instrument of responsible journalism.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.