news Quotes

“News from afar is seldom sooth.”

“There came the news, at first somewhat guarded, then, a few days later, clear and outspoken, of the German concentration camps.”

“TV news has no intention of suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore obstruct their attending to the next story.”

“When news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.”

“There is no subject of public interest—politics, news, education, religion, science, sports—that does not find its way to television. Which means that all public understanding of these subjects is shaped by the biases of television.”

“We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation.”

“I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.”

“We left because some people choose to wait for news and others make their own.”

“Words of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.”

“I’ve just been handed this bulletin--Commissioner James Gordon has been shot and killed--oops! Sorry, folks I read it wrong...Gordon has shot and killed a seventeen-year-old member of the mutant gang...”

“Woman explodes in subway station--film at eleven.”

″‘I take it this means that you had good news from the doctor?’ ‘She says I shall live to be a hundred.’ ‘And what’s the good news?‘”

“Life was going along okay when my mother and father dropped the news. Bam! Just like that.”

I worried about the girls’ father and wondered about how much the mother relied on Uncle Paul. I really enjoyed the news headlines and how Ms Dubosarsky built aspects of those stories into this book.

Mostly we see the story through Matilda’s point of view which, as Matilda is only six, provides an interesting perspective. Frances is eleven and Elizabeth is fifteen. Each day is heralded in with news headlines, so we read about new cases in the polio epidemic and the Petrov Affair. Against this backdrop, Frances worries about a school friend with polio, Elizabeth wonders about Mrs Petrov and Matilda observes all manner of things.

“Pat is the Greensdale postman. Every day he drives his red van up the valley. Twisting along the twining roads, up and over the hills, far away; down narrow lanes and tracks to farms and cottages. He brings letters and cards; newspapers and magazines; football-pools and catalogs and bills and birthday-cards and parcels full of who-knows-what? He also brings a smile, a joke, a chat; news of the valley and who’s-doing what. He has a little black cat, called Jess.”

“I am beginning to learn that life-altering news is often like a premature birth: ill-timed, catching someone unaware, emotionally unprepared & often where they shouldn’t be.”

“But the big news stations won’t give the Tap-Out the critical airtime it needs – not until there are images that are as dramatic as wind taking off roofs. And if it takes that long for the Tap-Out to be taken seriously, it will be too late.”

“Edward and Henry stop quite often and tell him the news. Gordon is always in a hurry and does not stop, but he never forgets to say, ‘poop poop’ to little Thomas, and Thomas always whistles. ‘Peep peep’ in return.”

“The news became known. I had spent weeks at work, studying, correlating statis­tics, going through reports, none of which actually help to reveal the truth of what it is like to be discriminated against. They cancel truth almost more than they reveal it. I decided to throw them away and simply publish what happened to me.”

″...it’s going to be jolly awkward if we can’t print any news that’s got an ‘e’ in it.”

″‘Now my dear,’ said Father, ‘do try to adopt a more optimistic attitude. This news of Georgie’s may promise the approach of a more felicitous and bountiful era.‘”

“The bush was alive with excitement. Mrs Koala had a brand new baby, and the news spread like wildfire.”

“It should not surprise us to find in the one man the perfection of two such lines of activity if we remember that the daily press was already beginning to transform itself and to become what it is to-day- the gazette of crime.”

“The check from The Auk had come, on time. ‘Hurray!‘, said Papa. ‘We can go! We can spend the whole summer. I can write ten books!’ he said. Papa was always about ten books behind in his writings.”

The housekeeper’s room had heard something of the news by this time, and Audrey had had a busy time explaining to other members of the staff exactly what he had said, and what she had said. The details were not quite established yet, but this much at least was certain: that Mr. Mark’s brother had shot himself and spirited Mr. Mark away, and that Audrey had seen at once that he was that sort of man when she opened the door to him.

But it was not as “eligibles” that the visitors from the Red House were received with such eagerness to-day, and even if her special smile for “possibles” was there, it was instinctive rather than reasoned. All that she wanted at this moment was news—news of Mark.