Quotes by Janet Malcolm - Page 1

Malice remains its animating impulse.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Impulse
Malice
Remains
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The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Motive
Murderer
Needs
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I think of myself as more of a maker than a thinker.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Thinker
Maker
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Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Done
States
Writing
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The 'I' character in journalism is almost pure invention.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Character
Invention
Journalism
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I don't want to manipulate actuality; I want to record it.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Actuality
Manipulate
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My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Scepticism
Biography
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If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Painting
Photograph
Photography
Scratches
Two
Scratch
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The autobiographer works in a treacherous terrain. The journalist has a much safer job.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Journalist
Terrain
Treacherous
Works
Safer
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The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Anarchy
Deliberately
Induced
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The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Cameras
Description
Powerful
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The journalist cannot create his subjects any more than the analyst can create his patients.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Subjects
Patients
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Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Account
Journalists
Swallow
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The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Exposing
Gentlemanly
Confines
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This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Art
Armed Robbery
Mother
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There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Burning
Might
Photographer
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'The Rachel Maddow Show' is a piece of sleight of hand presented as a cable news show. It is TV entertainment at its finest.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Finest
Presented
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Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Characteristics
Fidelity
Journalistic
Way
Characteristic
Expressing
Quotation
Sine
Subject
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The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography's status as a popular genre.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Explanation
Acknowledged
Biography
Rarely
Status
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Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Journalist
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I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Art
Always Trying
Interesting
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I don't go out of my way to be friendly, because it's completely unnecessary. People tell you what they are going to tell you no matter what.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Friendly
Unnecessary
People Way Matter
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[The] arresting of time is photography's unique capacity, and the decision of when to click the shutter is the photographer's chief responsibility.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Photography
Responsibility
Unique
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Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Giving
Heart
Novelists
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A lawsuit is to ordinary life what war is to peacetime. In a lawsuit, everybody on the other side is bad. A trial transcript is a discourse in malevolence.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
War
Law
Ordinary
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As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Analysing
Reactions
Talented
Observer
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I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work is, right? To make the reader think it is not hard to do.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Work Time Long
Hammer
Sentence
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Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Psychoanalysis
Curiously
Influenced
Theories
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Keeping one's eyes open, listening, watching, being quiet, adopting some of the techniques of the psychoanalyst in talking to people, will bring you that surface from which something more comes.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Adopting
Being Quiet
Techniques
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Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Analysts
Heal
Patient
Trying
Analyst
Cover
Pick
Properly
Raw
Tries
Wound
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Biographies never feel as real as the best fiction. There is such a discontinuity between the narrative and the material it comes from, which is always such a mixed bag of letters, recollections, and other data.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Biographies
Data
Letters
Narrative
Best Always Feel
Bag
Mixed
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The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Beach
Shore
Trembling
Trait
Fearlessly
Robe
Stands
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You could say that any book that takes a position is not fair, unless you keep saying, 'On the one hand, on the other...' and take a great deal of trouble to present both sides. That kind of journalism tends not to be very interesting.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Both Sides
Journalism
Not Fair
Sides
Great Deal
Tends
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Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public’s right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Art
Earning
Freedom Of Speech
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The heavy odds against finding the desired... work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Art
Odds
Reality
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[Y]ou never come right out and admit you have stretched the rules for your own benefit. You do it and shut up about it, and hope you don't get caught, because if you are caught no one or no one who has any sense will come forward and say he has done the same thing himself.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Benefits
Done
Hypocrisy
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Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Trust
Betrayal
Loneliness
Stupid
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Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but, in fact, childish trust and impetuosity are far more common.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Caution
Extreme
Trust Day People
Childish
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The journalistic 'I' is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Chorus
Creation
Crucial
Dispassionate
Embodiment
Journalistic
Narration
Tone
Tragedy
Ad
Entrusted
Observer
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My living room has an oak-wood floor, Persian carpets, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a large ficus and large fern, a fireplace with a group of photographs and drawings over it, a glass-top coffee table with a bowl of dried pomegranates on it, and sofas and chairs covered in off-white linen.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Chairs
Coffee
Covered
Living Room
Over It
Persian
Bowl
Photographs
Coffee Table
Drawings
Dried
Fireplace
Group
Large
Room
Table
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The letters and journals we leave behind and the impressions we have made on our contemporaries are the mere husk of the kernel of our essential life. When we die, the kernel is buried with us. This is the horror and pity of death and the reason for the inescapable triviality of biography.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Buried
Letters
Mere
Pity
Triviality
Life Death Die
Biography
Contemporaries
Inescapable
Journals
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All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Analysis
Ashes
Mouths
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The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Beach
Grieving
Self
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[Richard Avedon's] camera dwells on the horrible things that age can do to people's faces - on the flabby flesh, the slack skin, the ugly growths, the puffy eyes, the knotted necks, the aimless wrinkles, the fearful and anxious set of the mouth, the marks left by sickness, madness, alcoholism, and irreversible disappointment.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Disappointment
Eye
Wrinkles
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Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Taken
Thinking
Views
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Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Agreement
Hands
Order
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The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the ‘I’ of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic ‘I’ is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.
Janet Malcolm / Writer
Character
Greek
Ideas
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Janet Malcolm Quotes - Page 1

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