Molly Ivins Quotes

The people who are writing online and the people in my genre of creative non-fiction exert a great deal more freedom that journalists are allowed to exert in their day-to-day work.

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.

My journalist sensibilities have guided me toward the types of projects I've gone for, even though the projects have been fairly diverse. It always has to have that interesting to attract me, I think.

I never take ideas from the headlines. I feel that if a story is good enough, a real story that is, then it's already been covered by the media, and if it's not good enough, why would I want to bother with it?

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting.

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.

Art is art, and journalism is journalism.

I'm really not a journalist, and I don't do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I'll write about something that's going on recently, but I really don't do a ton of stuff that's tied to current events.

I had to find stories no one else was writing, so I got away from the quarterback and the coach. I'm still looking for stories no one else has written.

I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for my whole adult life.

As a reporter, going around, you hear stories you can't prove, which means you can't put them in the newspaper. But they're good stories, and I would jot them down thinking maybe one day I could write that as a short story.

I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter - nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.

There are a lot of reporters who I feel are a lot more courageous and fool-hardy than I am. Maybe at the top I'd put Dexter Filkins. He's an extraordinary man in terms of his nerve and ability to get into dangerous situations and tell the story cogently. He's bringing back real human stories. I admire that.

I believe there are two kinds of journalists. One who sells a story by being creative, and one who sells a story by being sensationalist.

Even the two novels I've written were based on true stories. It's how I'm wired - real life is fascinating and fantastical enough. The kind of journalism I did unpeeled lids from cans otherwise sealed.

I want to do journalism on journalists. I want to do the stories on stories that aren't being told.

I always thought of myself as more of a columnist, but maybe a columnist who does reporting.

There is certainly no want of journalistic ambition among the purveyors of what is now called 'long-form,' nor of novelistic technique brought to bear on nonfiction, nor of outrage.

Journalists always want publishers or editors to leave. They're creative troublemakers - that's why you hire them.

When you work at a magazine, you have to tell the truth. When you're not working in that format, it's fun to see where your mind takes you when the dictates have nothing to do with anyone but yourself.

I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.

If I weren't acting, I'd study journalism because I love to write.

I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.

There are plenty of paths to becoming a writer, but I think the most reliable ones involve total commitment: writing for magazines and newspapers, teaching writing, editing books, representing authors.