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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

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Janet Malcolm
Age: 86 †
Born: 1934
Born: July 8
Died: 2021
Died: June 17
Journalist
Writer
Praha
Jana Wienerová
Janet Clara Malcolm
Doe
Vanity
Remorse
Without
Loneliness
Morally
Going
Fame
Betrayal
Every
Confidence
Deception
Kind
Ignorance
Betray
Preying
Men
Stupid
Journalist
Indefensible
People
Trust
Notice
Betraying
Full
Journalism
Gaining

More quotes by Janet Malcolm

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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.
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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.
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The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.
Janet Malcolm
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The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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The 'I' character in journalism is almost pure invention.
Janet Malcolm
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Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness.
Janet Malcolm
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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
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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