Janet Malcolm

“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

“We are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.”

“Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.”

“Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world.”

“The 'I' of the writer is a grammatical convenience, not a biographical reality.”

“A writer is someone who has found a process that will perfectly accompany his life.”

“What we call 'morality' is simply blind obedience to words of command.”

“The journalistic encounter is a fundamentally asymmetrical one.”

“To be a biographer is to be a voyeur.”

“Art is the only thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.”

“The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.”

“The cat is out of the bag and will not go back in.”