P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

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

The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute.

In Iraq, embedding allows us to put reporters in situations that would otherwise be too dangerous for them.

I think probably the scaredest I've ever been was in Somalia. I arrived there when the episode that became known as 'Black Hawk Down' was still taking place. The Americans were still pinned down under fire. And everybody else was basically going the other way, and I was the only one putting my hand up for a flight in.

I'm not a war reporter.

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

I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war.

There's action only if there is danger.

The highest admiration I have for my colleagues is not for someone in a studio in New York but for somebody on the ground in places that they've gone to fight to tell the story.

I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back.

I was no stranger to risk myself, having made documentaries in dangerous conditions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Africa.

I was a war correspondent and journalist for a long time, and I was very near the towers on 9/11 and very shortly after in Afghanistan.

Life has to be dangerous.

To be able to live and train in Iraq under these circumstances you need to be brave.

Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict.

When I decided to stay in Iraq, I decided to take the fear out of my body and put it into a freezer.

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.

War reporters are often seen as a wild bunch of thrill-seekers who wade into danger zones simply for the sake of the adrenalin high the settings inevitably provide. But this one-dimensional explanation leaves out the core of the story, which is that reporters go to these places because they feel the tug of responsibility.

Danger gleams like sunshine to a brave man's eyes.

I was a war correspondent in Korea. I did a book on it: 'This is War.'

We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face.

You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you're essentially running to things that other people are running away from.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.