19 Quotes by Leslie Cockburn

Why did you become a journalist?”“Better than working for a living.

Are you a journalist?”“I’m a doctor.”“Good. We need doctors, Wallahi.” Sadoon scowled. “Journalists only tell lies and smuggle carpets.

There are a lot of people missing in Iraq. Just the other day I heard of somebody asking $250,000 ransom for an Egyptian. Can you imagine? An Egyptian. That’s inflation. This war,” he said, leaning closer to her, “is all about money.

Death was sweetened for the martyrs by the promise of 72 virgins waiting in paradise. She had researched the 72 virgins. The number wasn’t actually in the Quran but in the Hadith 2687, collected in the Book of Sunan. The Quran, in Sura 56, was vague on the point. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls … A new analysis translated houris from the Aramaic dialect Syriac as “white raisins”, which put everything in a very different light.

She had done her residency at LA County Hospital, where the CT machines were so old she had to mark off the body parts for scanning with paper clips. She thought Baghdad hospitals might be like that.

But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.

When you are on assignment, you stick to the facts, limit your vision, and often cut out the most revealing material. There is no texture, no shades of gray. In fiction, you can bring the reader on the perilous journey with your characters as they discover that war is more like a wilderness of mirrors, full of danger and uncertainty.

When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its different permutations.

Journalism, for me, has always been a calling. There are things that must be exposed to the light, truths that must be uncovered, stories worth risking your life for.