91 Quotes by Janet Malcolm

Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.

I don't go out of my way to be friendly, because it's completely unnecessary. People tell you what they are going to tell you no matter what.

I'm a very laboured writer. I hammer it out sentence by sentence, and it takes a long time. That's what the work is, right? To make the reader think it is not hard to do.

If I write a page a day, I feel very good about it.

As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.

People talk in ungrammatical, unwriterly ways.

I think of myself as more of a maker than a thinker.

I don't want to manipulate actuality; I want to record it.

My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.