News, if unreported, has no impact. It might as well have not happened at all

Listen, then make up your own mind.

The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm

People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate that you’re alive?

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games; then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing.

Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. . . . gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.