“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.

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.

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.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That’s just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free.

If we don’t watch out, the pleasure o be gained from the discriminating enjoyment of food will be lost. It may not be long before the art of fine cooking is viewed as the invention of a handful of snobs. . . .

Proust had his madeleines; I am devastated by the scent of yeast bread rising.

Grub first, then ethics.

Good manners: The noise you don’t make when you’re eating soup.

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.

I don’t really cook meat. I eat a bit of seafood but I’m not really into meat and the idea of cooking it is pretty intense.