Anthony Shadid Quotes

Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?

I was planning, I told everybody, to take him on the road with me. At the very least I fully expected to keep up my hectic pace, and my passion as a war correspondent.

Journalists dedicate their lives to covering war - they make many personal sacrifices, and it's not something that's gender-based. In a place like Libya where there's heavy fighting, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman.

I think it's very important to have a sense of balance in covering the war, but you don't have to be morally neutral about terrorism.

I am the Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

At Al Jazeera, we are getting our local Somalis, Yemenis and Sudanese, local correspondents from within the society, who understand much better than the people who come from overseas. We will get a much better insight.

There was a time when I first started when I made a fake press pass and borrowed a camera and headed into wars, and for three years, that was the only kind of story I was interested in doing.

I was working in the same building as U.S. News & World Report, and I banged on the door and said, "I'm ready to go." And they said, "What's your combat experience?" I said, "Does my parents' divorce count? It was pretty rough." Then they said, "What's your reporting experience?" And I said, "I covered the women's volleyball team in college exceptionally well." The guy was like, "You are so not ready to be a war correspondent."

I like to tell people that I have the best job in the media. All I do is hang around with heroes. I do that every week for my 'War Stories' documentary series - and when FOX News wants - I go off and cover the young Americans we send to places like Afghanistan or Iraq.

I've covered a couple wars and a lot of breaking news and a lot of cops-and-robbers situations.

My life isn't always at risk, even if I'm in a war zone. A lot of these places have areas of calm, so covering war doesn't necessarily mean being shot at all the time.

I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture.

I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line.

I don't go to war for the adrenaline rush. I cover wars because that's what I've ended up doing.

I attach the greatest importance to an amplification of the peace efforts in the Middle East. I would also like to see a greater dialogue between the U.S. and the EU.

Most people, when they meet me, one of the first things they say is, 'Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to war? Why would you go into these places where you know there's a risk of getting killed?'

During the war, in which several of our embedded correspondents were able to report from moving vehicles crossing the Iraqi desert, the use of technology made news gathering safer.

Here's a notion: Peace in the Middle East would come about more easily if the region were governed by women.

War coverage should be more than a parade of retired generals and retired government flacks posing as reporters.

Investment in education and economic prosperity is the best way to cure fanaticism and for establishing a just peace in the Middle East.

In some ways, Israel has achieved a peace. There are fewer rockets being sent into Sderot, there are no rockets to speak of from the North, there has been very little terrorism from the West Bank. It's a kind of peace. I hope for a better and more enduring peace. Peace is not an endgame; we will never be completely at peace.

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or terrorism or the use of military force or politics. It's all I can do to know a little bit about how to help people raise their kids and what to do when they get sick. When a war happens, I just hope it gets over with quickly so that how we take care of children becomes more important again.

I wish I was the kind of writer who would go to a war zone and write about something that's meaningful and important to people, but that's not my area of coverage.