72 Quotes by David Talbot

In this environment, what I want to do is take my bet away from crude oil and move it downstream. That way you've got your finger in all the pies.

For the average user, the Internet these days all too often resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane. Times Square has been cleaned up, but the Internet keeps getting worse.

The Internet, of course allowed us to show the world what we can do. It was a way to have a national if not international platform.

Most magazines have become wallpaper, they’re all the same, all the same celebrities. It’s really an abysmal time in American journalism right now. But occasionally one story or two will pop out.

People sort of take it for granted, but the more you see of the media world the more you appreciate a paper like the Times where its family continues to invest in editorial quality and I think it’s the truly is the best paper in the world.

It’s like a cast of actors; you’re all working together closely under pressure to produce something everyday. And when we put up an issue, it’s like the curtains opening on a new play. I really like that daily sense of surprise.

While I’m critical to the Bush presidency, it’s been enormously beneficial for Salon because we’re seen as kind of an aggressive watchdog on the Bush White House. Particularly since Florida, our readership hit a whole new level, and we held onto those readers.

I came at age in the ’60s, and initially my hopes and dreams were invested in politics and the movements of the time – the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement. I worked on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for president as a teenager in California and the night he was killed.

The entire economy, of course, is locked in a down cycle right now. Last time we weathered this was during another Bush presidency in ’90. We were locked in it for a year and a half and everyone came out of it.