The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life. Seamus Heaney (Location 110)
Tags: life
Note: .life
‘I have lived a good life. I made people happy. And I did what I thought was right.’ (Location 711)
Tags: life
Note: .life
Marie would always say that Hersey’s Hiroshima was the best book on war she had ever read. (Location 733)
Tags: toread
Note: .toread
10th July 1977. There are so many things I want to put my energy into, I often ask why I’m not happy completely without a man. Is it ingrained? My sense of self is not independent of men – I need their feedback. That old dichotomy, I want my liberty, I want to be free to create, be the free spirit, but at the same time I guess, I’ve admitted that I want security. (Location 777)
It doesn’t matter if you mess up, choose the wrong road, flop in Vegas. What’s important is to throw yourself in head first, to ‘go for the gusto.’ And if you blow it, you blow it. What we have to worry about now is success. Once you’re successful, it becomes embarrassing to make mistakes, and more difficult to grab onto the nearest straw and hold on. You can always be a star, so what’s the rush? (Location 827)
Yeats, the couple’s favourite poet: I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (Location 1890)
Tags: dreams
Sean and John saw winning awards as a way of promoting the brand, and the pressure increased. ‘Newspaper of the Year’ was displayed under the masthead and ‘Journalist of the Year’ attached to a byline. Conflict reporting had the edge over equally important but less exciting stories. If the personal experience of a war correspondent was incorporated into the story – especially if it was heart-stoppingly dangerous – awards judges, like readers, experienced a vicarious thrill. It was no longer just about getting a story no one else had, but also about showing how you had diced with death to get it. Some reporters were uneasy about the new direction, but not Marie. She liked the idea of being fêted as the boldest of the bold. (Location 2849)
for Marie Colvin covering war is a lifestyle.’ Marie responded with words that would become a mantra. ‘Getting at the truth is why we all entered journalism,’ she said. ‘We have to bear witness. We can make a difference.’ (Location 3584)
what haunted him were not his own injuries – which were several – but guilt for walking away after taking pictures, for surviving. (Location 3909)
They rushed in to the sole TV, a small black-and-white set in the staff living room, and watched a plane fly into the second tower of the World Trade Center. ‘It’s bin Laden,’ said Marie. (Location 3943)
Now, overwhelmed by thirty years of reporting violence and cruelty, he could no longer see the romance, only the pain and frustration. On medical advice, he had taken time off and negotiated a deal whereby he would in future balance reporting conflict with more life-enhancing subjects. (Location 4222)
Marie had cut to the chase, posing the only question that mattered at that moment. A slim man rose from the middle of the audience. ‘I’m a former KGB agent. I know who killed Anna,’ he said. He turned around and addressed Marie directly. ‘Come and see me afterwards.’ She got his card and they talked that night, but she never had the chance to follow up. He was the dissident ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko. Ten days later he lay dying in a London hospital, a victim of poisoning from polonium, slipped into his tea by two Russian agents. (Location 4611)