22+ Janet Malcolm Quotes On Education, Death And Books

Janet Malcolm is an American writer and journalist. She is best known for her book The Journalist and the Murderer, which examines the ethical issues of journalism. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Janet Malcolm on education, life, love.

Top 10 Janet Malcolm Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.
4. If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.
5. Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
6. The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.
7. Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.
8. There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.
9. The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.
10. The 'I' character in journalism is almost pure invention.

Janet Malcolm Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness. — Janet Malcolm

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

[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

[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

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

[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

Malice remains its animating impulse. — Janet Malcolm

Life Lessons by Janet Malcolm

1. Janet Malcolm's work emphasizes the importance of being aware of the power dynamics between interviewer and interviewee, and the potential for bias and manipulation in any journalistic endeavor.
2. She also highlights the need to be mindful of the ethical implications of one's work and to strive for accuracy and fairness in reporting.
3. Finally, Malcolm's writing encourages us to recognize the complexity of human behavior and to be open to the possibility of multiple interpretations of any given situation.