Columnist Quotes & Sayings

He was ever conscious of his obligation to play well. Late in his career, when his legs were bothering him and the Yankees had a comfortable lead in a pennant race, a friend of his, columnist Jimmy Cannon, asked him why he played so hard - the games, after all, no longer meant so much. "Because there might be somebody out there who's never seen me play before," he answered. — David Halberstam

We newspaper readers all have our pet vexations. Somewhere in one of those sections is the column we anxiously turn to for the sole purpose of disagreeing with the columnist. Volubly. — Barbara Kingsolver

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people try their hand at this demanding profession (humor columnist). After a few months, almost all of them have given up and gone back to the ninth grade. — Dave Barry

In 1996, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire published a column, 'Blizzard of lies,' in which he laid out a series of falsehoods by Hillary Rodham Clinton and declared 'Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -€" a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -€" is a congenital liar.' — Marc Thiessen

I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes. — Karl Rove

Criticism should be done by critics, and a critic should have some training and some love of the medium he is discussing. But these days, gossip-columnist training seems to be enough qualification. I suppose an ability to stand on your feet through interminable cocktail parties and swig interminable gins in between devouring masses of fried prawns may just possibly help you to understand and appreciate what a director is getting at, but for the life of me I can't see how. — Peter Sellers

Sometimes it's necessary to shame the city's business class, the columnist later remarked, to remind them that a city like San Francisco is more than just a real estate opportunity - it's "a precious, special, fragile place. — David Talbot

But that's kind of an easy stance to be if you're a humor columnist, because you're tending to make fun of the government and the powerful. I'm sort of a soft-core libertarian in that my compass is generally pointing away from 'Let's let the government do this' Does it matter to me that it's Democrats who think we need more elaborate programs that involve shifting money from one group to another group or it's Republicans saying we need to take a harder look at what kinds of things people are watching on cable TV? Neither one of those things strikes me as a good idea. — Dave Barry

Recently the country has seen too much of our legislators, seeing them as a gaggle of check-kiting, judge-smearing deadbeats who don't pay their restaurant bills but raise their pay in the middle of the night. Many Americans-this columnist included-hitherto said tax increases are justified by the budget deficit now say: Give that mob more money? Never. Not a nickel of new taxes until term limits change the political culture on Capital Hill. — George Will

Teamwork is better than isolation, especially for a columnist. — Allan Sloan

The teen years are not a vacation from responsibility," we had told the columnist. "They are the training ground of future leaders who dare to be responsible — Alex Harris

Emily Zanotti is a Republican political strategist and author. She is a regular contributor to The American Spectator and a featured opinion columnist with The Wall Street Journal. Her work has appeared across the political spectrum, in National Review, The Daily Caller, Slate, and elsewhere. — Joanne Bamberger

As a columnist, I realize that whatever amount of corruption I expose, half my readers will block it out, although they may get a frisson of joy in the process. — Margaret Carlson

I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me. — Mark Cuban

All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your date requests, or posting a picture of your foot? All of that is more gripping and immediate and social than books. — Russell Smith

The people I meet in my life as a newspaper columnist are crazy and fascinating - although I love writing fiction some of the stuff that happens you just couldn't make up — Ros Reines

As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel's tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of "trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians - the families and employers of the militants - to restrain Hezbollah in the future."10 And by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to "educate" Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin's destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises. — Noam Chomsky

We know Roger Ebert loved the 'Sun-Times' and his career as a newspaper columnist. But ironically, it was his illness and losing his voice that caused him to explore another venue. — Bill Kurtis

To a thoughtful biographer, [Ebling Mis's house] was "the symbolization of a retreat from a non-academic reality", a society columnist gushed silkily at its "frightfully masculine atmosphere of careless disorder", a University Ph.D called it brusquely, "bookish, but unorganized", a non-university friend said, "good for a drink anytime and you can put your feet on the sofa", and a breezy newsweekly broadcast, that went in for color, spoke of the "rooky, down-to-earth, no-nonsense living quarters of blaspheming, Leftish, balding Ebling Mis".
To Bayta, who thought of no audience but herself at the moment, and who had the advantage of first-hand information, it was merely sloppy. — Isaac Asimov

January 15: Columnist Bob Thomas publicizes Marilyn's doubts about the Something's Got to Give script. — Carl Rollyson

It's more believable that a cop would get involved in solving these murders. I mean, you're talking about writing a series. How believable is it that this Hollywood gossip columnist is going to keep stumbling on all these murders? — Josh Lanyon

Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse. — Cynthia Heimel

Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist. — Allan Sloan

You can't run away from your fears. Isn't that what you always tell your readers?"
I was an advice columnist for Vibe, a magazine about relationships and sex and urban culture. My column, called "Ask Miss Independent," had started at a student-run publication, and I had quickly developed a following. Upon graduating, I'd taken Miss Independent to Vibe, and they offered me a weekly feature. Most of my advice was posted publicly, but I also sent private paid-for replies to those who requested it. To supplement my income, I also did occasional freelancing for women's magazines.
"I'm not running away from my fears," I told Dane. "I'm running away from my relatives."
Ring.
"Just pick it up, Ella. You always tell people to face their problems."
"Yes, but I prefer to ignore mine and let them fester. — Lisa Kleypas

We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out. — Michael Shermer

The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time. — William Safire

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches. — Amy Klobuchar

Donald Trump announced his no Muslims are allowed to come to the United States plan and that led to one of the greatest tweets of all time from New York Times columnist. Quote, "OK, I concede I picked the wrong day to modestly walk back my Trumpism as fascism column." — Rachel Maddow

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Colin Campbell says that every member of the Georgia General Assembly with an IQ above 85 should be required to wear a crash helmet. That should take about ... oh, say 15 helmets? — Neal Boortz

A certain columnist has been banned from all Shubert openings. Now he can wait three days and go to their closings. — Walter Winchell

That is why, I explained to Bojia, as a columnist, "I am either in the heating business or the lighting business." Every column or blog has to either turn on a lightbulb in your reader's head - illuminate an issue in a way that will inspire them to look at it anew - or stoke an emotion in your reader's heart that prompts them to feel or act more intensely or differently about an issue. The ideal column does both. But — Thomas L. Friedman

And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats. — Roberto Bolano

Sally Jenkins of the 'Washington Post' is the best sports columnist in the country. Second best is Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN, and third is Dan Wetzel on Yahoo! — Dan Jenkins

Krugman has been a columnist for the Times for a long enough time, covering a sufficient variety of political events, for us to deduce that he is a political nitwit. Other Nobel laureates have been nitwits, for instance, Bertrand Russell. There are a lot of political nitwits in this world. Perhaps the Times could give Krugman a cooking column. He would be its Nobel Prise-winning cooking columnist. — Bob Tyrrell

All politicians lie;
some of them steal too.
30+ year Washington columnist — John A. McCormick

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women. — Anna Quindlen

It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong. — Bill Scott

Hi. I'm Spider Jerusalem. I smoke. I take drugs. I drink. I wash every six weeks. I masturbate constantly and fling my steaming poison semen down from my window into your hair and food. I'm a rich and respected columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper. I live with two beautiful women in the city's most expensive and select community. Being a bastard works. — Warren Ellis

In a speech, the columnist Charles Krauthammer ... offered a new version of Socrates' famous saying, "The unexamined life is not worth living." In our age of bottomless self-love and obsession with our own feelings, Krauthammer suggested, "The too-examined life is not worth living either. — John Leo

I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts. — Anna Quindlen

We piled into the back of his big red Sun-Times truck: Robertson, McHugh, a bagpipe player, assorted other regulars, and Good Sydney Harris. Good Sydney Harris was a Spanish Civil War veteran, not to be confused with the Bad Sydney Harris, the Daily News columnist. Good Sydney had fallen into conversation with a dominatrix named Jake, who joined us. — Roger Ebert

As anyone who has read 'Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin knows, it's quite possible to write an unreadable column without being a TV pundit. But if you want to be a consistently good columnist, you can't be on television. — Stephen Rodrick

Steinberg occupies a position that is very dear to those of us who've held it over the years: sports columnist at The Post. If all he wants to do is be popular
and I think Dan is better than that
then the readers of The Washington Post sports section won't be very well served. Telling readers how great they are as sports fans was never one of my priorities. The only thing worse than people who can't stand to hear an unpopular or unflattering opinion is those that are too afraid to state one. — Michael Wilbon

June 27: Sidney Fields is the first columnist to write about Marilyn, commenting in the New York Mirror: "Marilyn is a very lovely and relatively unknown movie actress. But give her time; you will hear from her. — Carl Rollyson

As an advice columnist, I spend a lot of time reading through psychology journals to ensure that I give the most up-to-date advice. — Amy Dickinson

I do feel haunted by some of the letters and the suffering people have endured. But I keep in mind that the people who write to me know that I am a journalist and an on-line advice columnist, not a social service professional. — Emily Yoffe

A politician wouldn't dream of being allowed to call a columnist the things a columnist is allowed to call a politician. — Max Lerner

Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true! — Dave Barry

In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. - Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, on his support for the invasion of Iraq2 — Naomi Klein

As [The Nation columnist Katha] Pollitt points out, when one starts looking beneath the surface of things and adding together the out-front atheists with the indifferent nonbelievers, you end up with a much larger group of people than Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Unitarians put together. — Natalie Angier

When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my own voice. — Allan Sloan

I know it's cheaper to fund an op-ed columnist than a team of reporters, but I think it confuses the mission of what these great journalistic brands are about, — Nate Silver

This occasional sports columnist, who has been to his share of Super Bowls, had been glad to be home on Super Bowl Sunday, but the scary commercials made me want to be in the melee of the arena, where you are not aware of commercials. — George Vecsey

The columnist gives these words to the longings of an 11-year-old he meets with Tourette's syndrome: Wisdom is encoded in our common language. We all have, to some extent, a complex, sometimes adversarial, relationship with our physical selves. And I more than most people know that it is correct to say,'I have a body.' There is my body, and then there is ME, trying to make it behave. — George F. Will

I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior FBI-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school ... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering. — Ernest Hemingway,

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman told one of the authors in Seoul, South Korea, a de cade ago that he has always followed one piece of advice that his MIT professors had given him: "Never touch the money system." Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008. — Anonymous

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II. — Mark Shields

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death. — Dave Barry

I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.) — Charles Stross

I wanted to be a columnist so badly that I took a huge pay cut to leave Forbes, which wouldn't give me a column, and join Newsday, which wanted my column for its Sunday business section. — Allan Sloan

On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist's equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can. — Dean Koontz

The great 'New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson famously slept one year in a child's race-car bed. There he was, Pulitzer Prize and all, snoring as his feet dangled over the rear tires of Lightning McQueen. — Willie Geist

including Edna Millay, there were five such women: essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. — Kate Bolick

Sometimes I'm very disappointed at some of the people in our family of communicators, whether it be a songwriter or a rapper that's always talking about negativity or a singer or a columnist or a network that basically gets off on just trying to create the negative. — Stevie Wonder

Don't commit to being a columnist unless you're willing to do it right. Report your behind off, so you have something original and useful to say. Say it in a way that will interest someone other than you, your family and your sources. — Allan Sloan

Lack of accomplishment is one thing; deceit is quite another. Everyone who has followed her career knows that Hillary is dishonest to the core, a "congenital liar" as columnist William Safire once put it. The writer Christopher Hitchens titled his book about the Clintons No One Left to Lie To. Even Hollywood mogul David Geffen, an avid progressive, said a few years ago of the Clintons, "Everybody in politics lies but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."3 — Dinesh D'Souza

Newspaper columnist Dave Barry once wrote that the motto of the wedding industry is, 'Money can't buy you happiness, so you might as well give your money to us. — Denise Fields

Everyone his own cinematographer. His own stream-of-consciousness e-mail poet. His own nightclub DJ. His own political columnist. His own biographer of his top-10 friends! — Walter Kirn

In my case, with my law degree, I was able to be an investment banker, in-house counsel, op-ed columnist, and author. No other degree except for the JD offers so many possibilities. More than knowing the law, the JD degree gives you a more invaluable skill set - the ability to think in a structured way to get to a solution. This type of skill set can be leveraged in almost any field. The only limit is your imagination. — Ann K. Levine

The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic," the New York Times tech columnist once wrote. "Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease. — Jaron Lanier

20. The day she graduated from college, Keegan told her mother that she was especially proud of her Yale Daily News article "Even Artichokes Have Doubts," which went on to be adapted for the New York Times and discussed on NPR. When The Opposite of Loneliness was first published in April 2014, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, "Keegan was right to prod us all to reflect on what we seek from life, to ask these questions, to recognize the importance of passions as well as paychecks - even if there are no easy answers." As Keegan reminds other young people that "we can do something really cool to this world" (p. 200), what points does she emphasize? What counterarguments might she have considered more specifically? Do you share her concern about where so many top young graduates take their first jobs? Do you worry that you need to compromise your own dreams for practical concerns? Why or why not? — Marina Keegan

My father was one of 11. He was an attorney. My mother worked for the Syracuse newspaper as a columnist before she became a stay-at-home mother. — Siobhan Fallon Hogan

I guess if you want me to stop writing horrible, mean takedowns of everyone, give me a really, really cushy columnist gig. — Alex Pareene

If a columnist writes that something happened on a certain date, or that the government spent a certain amount of money on something, or that a specific number of people have died in the war in Iraq, to pick a few examples, it is his or her responsibility to make certain that information is correct. — Andrew Rosenthal

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation. — Tavis Smiley

One of my lifelong hobbies has been to collect 'aptronyms' - the newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams's term for people whose names were curiously appropriate to, or provided ironic comment on, their occupations. — Timothy Noah

I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, where I began writing the columns I write now, but I cannot, in good conscience, refer to myself as a writer. I'm a columnist, maybe a journalist, I guess I'm an author, but writer ... no. That's not up to me to call myself, that's rather lofty. It's for the reader to decide. — Laurie Notaro

I used to be a columnist for 'Golf Monthly' and have contributed articles for national newspapers based on the humour that is in abundance in the game, which is more than can be said of tennis. — Jasper Carrott

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business. — Louis Kronenberger

Civically engaged, business oriented, technology obsessed, and socially skilled, Franklin was "our founding Yuppie," declares the New York Times columnist David Brooks. Franklin "would have felt right at home in the information revolution," Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of the statesman. "We can easily imagine having a beer with him after work, showing him how to use the latest digital device, sharing the business plan of a new venture, and discussing the most recent political scandals or policy ideas." The essence of Franklin's appeal is that he was brilliant but practical, interested in everything, but especially in how things work. — Fareed Zakaria

I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.'s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian's hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion. — Naomi Wolf

As the saying goes: "If you're not part of the solution, you're a newspaper columnist." — Dave Barry

When you are a reporter, your focus is on digging up facts to explain the visible and the complex and to unearth and expose the impenetrable and the hidden - wherever that takes you. You are there to inform, without fear or favor. Straight news often has enormous influence, but it's always in direct proportion to how much it informs, exposes, and explains. Opinion writing is different. When you are a columnist, or a blogger in Bojia's case, your purpose is to influence or provoke a reaction and not just to inform - to argue for a certain perspective so compellingly that you persuade your readers to think or feel differently or more strongly or afresh about an issue. That — Thomas L. Friedman

My agent pointed out one day that I had been quoted by a columnist in some American newspaper, and he noted with some glee that they simply identified me by name without reminding people who I was, apparently in the clear expectation that their readers would know who I am. — Terry Pratchett

Gossip columnists patrol their mundane arena with the same sort of mysterious merit the advice-givers do. Plainly put, how does anyone become a gossip columnist? I can't simplify it down to a lower scale than that. Are there universities that offer courses in gossip writing? How about plain old Gossip 111? Are there that many literate people who could not write a gossip column? What then, qualifies the chosen few above the rest? — Donald Jeffries

Of course you want someone special to love you. A majority of the people who write to me inquire about how they can get the same thing ... Unique as every letter is, the point each writer reaches is the same: I want love and I'm afraid I'll never get it.
It's hard to answer those letters because I'm an advice columnist, not a fortune-teller. I have words instead of a crystal ball. I can't say when you'll get love or how you'll find it or even promise that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it's never too much to ask for it. — Cheryl Strayed

In early 2014, the global economy's top five companies' gross cash holdings - those of Apple, Google, Microsoft, as well as the US telecom giant Verizon and the Korean electronics conglomerate Samsung - came to $387 billion, the equivalent of the 2013 GDP of the United Arab Emirates.78 This capital imbalance puts the fate of the world economy in the hands of the few cash hoarders like Apple and Google, whose profits are mostly kept offshore to avoid paying US tax. "Apple, Google and Facebook are latter-day scrooges," worries the Financial Times columnist John Plender about a corporate miserliness that is undermining the growth of the world economy. — Andrew Keen

I've been a solo act, a columnist and worked from home, only relying on myself. Now I'm part of a team, a leader, and I have to fit in at a big corporation and deal with all the moving parts, all the different personalities. That has been a challenge, to be quite honest, that I've embraced. — Jason Whitlock

I have a CS degree and a history that includes working as a software developer and being a computer magazine columnist back during the 1990s. I guess I simply paid attention to the social effects of the IT revolution as I lived through it. — Charles Stross