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

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

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

— Janet Malcolm

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

— Janet Malcolm