War Correspondent Quotes

“It has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars.”
― Marie Colvin

“Un secret est d’autant plus lourd à porter qu’il engage votre amour.”
― Olivier Weber, Le Barbaresque

“The "herrenvolk" [master race] are all around you, threading their way on their bicycles between the piles of rubble or rushing off with jugs and buckets to meet the water cart. It is queer to think that these are the people who once ruled Europe, from the Channel to the Caspian Sea and might have conquered our own island, if they had known how weak we were.”
― George Orwell, Orwell: The Observer Years

“Les secrets rendent le désir encore plus fou.”
― Olivier Weber, Le Barbaresque

“La gloire, c'est comme la gouache, ça prend très vite puis ça part à la première goutte de pluie.”
― Olivier Weber

“La littérature est un théâtre à ciel ouvert qui permet de transformer les êtres les plus simples en héros universels, loin des parterres présomptueux.
Conrad, Le Voyageur de l'inquiétude”
― Olivier Weber

“Le sabordage de l'âme devrait être enseigné dans les écoles de marine".
Le Voyageur de l'inquiétude”
― Olivier Weber

“Nous sommes tous des naufragés de l'âme vois-tu, la peinture n'est que le reflet de ce chagrin, antichambre de la grande joie à venir."
Nous sommes tous des naufragés de l'âme vois-tu, la peinture n'est que le reflet de ce chagrin, antichambre de la grande joie à venir.
On ne se tue pas pour une femme (Plon)”
― Olivier Weber

“Reporters go through four stages in a war zone. In the first stage, you’re Superman, invincible. In the second, you’re aware that things are dangerous and you need to be careful. In the third, you conclude that math and probability are working against you. In the fourth, you know you’re going to die because you’ve played the game too long. I was drifting into stage three.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“When I take risks now, I do so only when I have to and with every precaution. I used to prospect for news, dropping into places to see what was up. Well, I could go to parts of Libya today and find lots of good stories, but I probably wouldn’t be around to tell them.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“Kelly was starting to have serious second thoughts about the whole assignment. Like all war correspondents, she supposed. Being on the ground was very different to sitting in the office anticipating being on the ground. Especially with the appearance of that red cloud.”
― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction

“Another thing I had learned in Vietnam was that there are worse things than death, such as not being able to look anyone straight in the eye, especially the man in the mirror.”
― Philip Caputo, Means Of Escape: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Life and Death in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Vietnam

“Les djihadistes ont massacré les innocents et entendent désormais tuer l’amour.”
― Olivier Weber, La Confession de Massoud

“From seven hundred journalists at the beginning of March, the number had dwindled to about one hundred and fifty—print reporters, TV correspondents, photographers, cameramen, and support personnel. At the press center I encountered Kazem, who only a week before I had asked for help with my visa. “Why are you staying when everyone else is leaving?” he asked. I took a chance and replied in Arabic. Some journalists, I said, are as samid as the Iraqi people. Samid means “steadfast” and “brave” and is the adjective most often used by Iraqis to describe themselves. Kazem laughed and threw his arm around my shoulder.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“The bombing started up again, with explosions all around us, in broad daylight, but no one in the restaurant even flinched. Iraqis seemed numb after a quarter century under Saddam’s whip-hand rule. It was heartbreaking to see what a harsh dictatorship can do to the human soul. In less than a week, I had grown almost inured to explosions and fires.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“Each day had the same bloody rhythm: mortars at dawn, car bombs by 11: 00 a.m., drive-by shootings before tea, and mortars again at dusk. At night the death squads went to work.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“Then someone cried out, “Suicide bomber!” The crowd panicked. In the ensuing stampede, terrified pilgrims ran in both directions, many colliding in the middle of the bridge. A side railing collapsed under their weight, and scores leaped into the water whether they could swim or not. Hundreds were trampled to death. More than a thousand died. Hundreds of pairs of sandals were scattered around the bridge, left behind when pilgrims made their desperate dives into the river. I was given all of seventy-five seconds to tell the story on the Nightly News.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“I may have been in stage four, but I wasn’t completely crazy. At least eighty-six journalists had been killed in Iraq, more than in any other conflict since World War II, and another thirty-eight had been taken hostage. More would die in the years to come. I knew I had to limit my movements and take special care when I did go out.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“I could scarcely believe that my new home was engulfed by war before I even had time to find an apartment. It seemed that war followed me everywhere I went.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“He asked us what we were doing, and our smuggler said, “Oh, nothing. We’re just hanging out”—as if lots of Americans in ninja suits loitered around Syria in the middle of the afternoon. We asked him if he had a cell phone. He didn’t, which meant we had twenty or thirty minutes to get back across the Turkish border.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“We were meat to be bought and sold. Speaking Arabic made me a curious and unusual product. I didn’t want to be special. I didn’t want them to be curious about me.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“In 2015, when I went back to the States or to an international conference, I found that people didn’t much care anymore. They saw the Middle East awash in blood, beyond redemption, and didn’t want to read about it or see it on the evening news. They just wanted to keep away from it.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“The Americans gave it a name, PTSD — Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had heard about it before: it was something that had to do with army men coming back from the frontline, veterans who had been under a lot of stress. Or survivors of terrorist attacks, bombings, massacres, or big accidents. What I didn’t know was that journalists were also considered a category ‘at risk,’ particularly the ones who had covered conflict or reported in war zones crisis zones. All those who had witnessed episodes of violence, killings, traumatic events, and who had learnt to work and live coping with the anxiety from nearby fighting and constant danger. I saw many of my colleagues devastated — broken — by what they had seen, which often I had seen too. Some never managed to really go back to their normal lives and once, after a crisis that had hit them harder than the many others, decided they had had enough. Among many terrible news came those of the suicide of Stephanie Vaessen’s husband and cameraman — him and Stephanie were two of the people I had shared the tragic days in East Timor with.
No worries though. I was doing just fine, as I’d tell myself. At the end of the day, I genuinely believed it: I never really took as many risks as many of the colleagues I had met or shared the most traumatic experiences in the field with, hence I had probably been exposed to a lot less stress. (...)”
― Marco Lupis, Il male inutile: Dal Kosovo a Timor Est, dal Chiapas a Bali, le testimonianze di un reporter di guerra