There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.

- 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 …

- 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 biog…

- 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

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, giv…

- 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, t…

- Janet Malcolm

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.

- Janet Malcolm

Malice remains its animating impulse.

- Janet Malcolm

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