“Nothing’s riding on this, except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f-k up again, I’m gonna get mad.”

Our best today; better tomorrow.

There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.

The champagne was flowing like the Potomac in flood.

So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that’s a national security matter. Well, you’re supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government.

There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!

Hire people smarter than you are and encourage them to bloom.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be ‘gotcha’ journalism, but it’s also good journalism.

The biggest difference between Kennedy and Nixon, as far as the press is concerned, is simply this: Jack Kennedy really liked newspaper people and he really enjoyed sparring with journalists.

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth.

Generals who can write always make me nervous.

Maybe some of today’s papers have too many ‘feel-good’ features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.

It’s very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don’t seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they’re lazy, and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.

Those [Watergate] tapes are going to take me to my grave with a huge smile on my face.

Excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

Does it seem that everything is extravagance in the world, or rather madness, when you watch the way things go? A crowd of rogues enjoy blessings they have won by sheer injustice, while more honest folks are miserable and die of hunger.

I’m very emotional. I think I may go mad in several years’ time.

Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.

But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.

Great talent has always a little madness mixed up with it.

Fuck it I’m mad.