Ronan Farrow > Quotes

“In the end, the courage of women can't be stamped out. And stories - the big ones, the true ones - can be caught but never killed.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“You know, the press is as much part of our democracy as Congress or the executive branch or the judicial branch. It has to keep things in check. And when the powerful control the press, or make the press useless, if the people can’t trust the press, the people lose. And the powerful can do what they want.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“In the end, the employees said, Jonathan’s routine had been so boring the subcontractor surveilling him had given up. 'I’m interesting!' Jonathan said, when I told him. 'I am a very interesting person! I went to an escape room!”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“I think that it doesn’t matter if you’re a well-known actress, it doesn’t matter if you’re twenty or if you’re forty, it doesn’t matter if you report or if you don’t, because we are not believed. We are more than not believed—we are berated and criticized and blamed.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Weinstein laughed. “You couldn’t save someone you love, and now you think you can save everyone.” He really said this. You’d think he was pointing a detonator at Aquaman.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“I know that war is the failure of diplomacy and the failure of leaders to make alternative decisions.”
― Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

“Ultimately, the reason Harvey Weinstein followed the route he did is because he was allowed to, and that’s our fault. As a culture that’s our fault.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“All the women before feel I am their fault," she said. "And if there were women after me, I feel that is my fault.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Look at what’s happening! No one on these calls wants to own any of this, because it’s so obviously bad! It’s like a reverse Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone wants it dead, nobody wants to stab it!”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Bourdain said Weinstein’s predation was sickening, that “everyone” had known about it for too long. “I am not a religious man,” he wrote. “But I pray you have the strength to run this story.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“I’ll take care of you, baby,” he said. “I’ll keep you in finery and smoothies.” He hugged me around the middle like a kid hugging a stuffed animal. I laughed, put a hand on his. It had been a long year, for me and for us, but we hung in there. Later, when I decided some of that reporting would make its way into a book, I’d send him a draft, and put in a question, right on this page: “Marriage?” On the moon or even here on earth. He read the draft, and found the proposal here, and said, “Sure.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“This is the most important story I’ve ever been on,” I texted her. “If I am late it’s because I have absolutely no choice.” After journalism, drama and being late were my great passions.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories—the big ones, the true ones—can be caught but never killed.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Deborah Turness, who preceded Oppenheim, was described in lightly sexist profiles as having “rock-chick swagger,” which as far as I could tell just meant she sometimes chose to wear pants.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“I called Maddow, who listened, and said no one tells her how to run her show. And so it came to pass that, all through the two years after the Weinstein story, I appeared on her show, and never again on any other NBC or MSNBC program.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“They wanted to start something new, and he wanted to apply lessons from the past,” Kissinger said of Holbrooke. Similar battles were lost by other diplomats before, and more have been lost since. But the story of Richard Holbrooke, and the disintegration of his last mission, and the devastating effect that had on the lives of the diplomats around him, provide a window into what was lost when we turned away from a profession that once saved us. “It’s one great American myth,” Kissinger added, speaking slowly, “that you can always try something new.”
― Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

“The fears of militarization Holbrooke had expressed in his final, desperate memos, had come to pass on a scale he could have never anticipated. President Trump had concentrated ever more power in the Pentagon, granting it nearly unilateral authority in areas of policy once orchestrated across multiple agencies, including the State Department. In Iraq and Syria, the White House quietly delegated more decisions on troop deployments to the military. In Yemen and Somalia, field commanders were given authority to launch raids without White House approval. In Afghanistan, Trump granted the secretary of defense, General James Mattis, sweeping authority to set troop levels. In public statements, the White House downplayed the move, saying the Pentagon still had to adhere to the broad strokes of policies set by the White House. But in practice, the fate of thousands of troops in a diplomatic tinderbox of a conflict had, for the first time in recent history, been placed solely in military hands. Diplomats were no longer losing the argument on Afghanistan: they weren’t in it. In early 2018, the military began publicly rolling out a new surge: in the following months, up to a thousand new troops would join the fourteen thousand already in place. Back home, the White House itself was crowded with military voices. A few months into the Trump administration, at least ten of twenty-five senior leadership positions on the president’s National Security Council were held by current or retired military officials. As the churn of firings and hirings continued, that number grew to include the White House chief of staff, a position given to former general John Kelly. At the same time, the White House ended the practice of “detailing” State Department officers to the National Security Council. There would now be fewer diplomatic voices in the policy process, by design.”
― Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

“But this idea found little purchase in an environment where victims were expected to be saints, and otherwise were disregarded as sinners. The women who spoke that summer were just people, acknowledging that all did a courageous thing, Argento included, does not excuse the choices made in the years that followed.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“And she remembered her costar in Phantoms, Ben Affleck, seeing her visibly distraught immediately after the incident, and hearing where she’d just come from, and replying, “God damn it, I told him to stop doing this.” McGowan believed she’d been “blacklisted” after the incident. “I barely worked in movies ever again.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“In the months after the New York Times and New Yorker stories broke, dozens of additional women accused Weinstein of sexual harassment or violence. The number grew to thirty, then sixty, then eighty.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Trying to get ahold of Davis later on, i asked Jonathan, "Who would have Lanny Davis's number?" He replied, I don't know, Pol Pot?”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“She drew a deep breath and said, “I hope the other girls get justice.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“One after another, the AMI employees used the same phrase to describe this practice of purchasing a story in order to bury it. It was an old term in the tabloid industry: “catch and kill.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“I looked up and down the block. The street was mostly empty. “Why do you think they were here for me?” He rolled his eyes. “Ronan. Is always you. You move in, address print everywhere, now I have no peace.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“And NBC is letting you walk away with all this?” Remnick asked. “Who is this person at NBC? Oppenheim?” “Oppenheim,” I confirmed. “And he’s a screenwriter, you say?” “He wrote Jackie,” I replied. “That,” Remnick said gravely, “was a bad movie.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Erin Fitzgerald had the kind of high-end consulting job that repeated explanations shed little light on.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“Unprecedented,” blared Foreign Policy and a host of other publications on what was being described as the Trump administration’s “assault” or “war” on the State Department. But for all the ways in which the developments were shocking, to describe them as unprecedented was simply not true. The Trump administration brought to a new extreme a trend that had, in fact, been gathering force since September 11, 2001. From Mogadishu to Damascus to Islamabad, the United States cast civilian dialogue to the side, replacing the tools of diplomacy with direct, tactical deals between our military and foreign forces. At home, White Houses filled with generals. The last of the diplomats, keepers of a fading discipline that has saved American lives and created structures that stabilized the world, often never made it into the room. Around the world, uniformed officers increasingly handled the negotiation, economic reconstruction, and infrastructure development for which we once had a devoted body of trained specialists. As a result, a different set of relationships has come to form the bedrock of American foreign policy. Where civilians are not empowered to negotiate, military-to-military dealings still flourish. America has changed whom it brings to the table, and, by extension, it has changed who sits at the other side. Foreign ministries are still there. But foreign militaries and militias often have the better seats.”
― Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

“I’m interesting!” Jonathan said, when I told him. “I am a very interesting person! I went to an escape room!”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

“As the disasters of Iraq deepened, a bruised Bush administration did attempt to shift additional resources into diplomacy and development. The White House pledged to double the size of USAID’s Foreign Service, and began to speak of rebalancing civilian and military roles and empowering the US ambassador in Iraq. The supposed rebalancing was more pantomime than meaningful policy—there was no redressing the yawning chasm of resources and influence between military and civilian leadership in the war—but there was, at least, an understanding that military policymaking had proved toxic.”
― Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

“Hillary Clinton, who’d known about the book since I described it to her during my time working for her at the State Department, had agreed early and with enthusiasm. “Thank you, my friend, for your message; it is great hearing from you and I am delighted to know that you are close to completing your book project,” she wrote that July. The letter was printed on embossed stationery in a curly art deco font, like a New Yorker headline or a piece of set-dressing from BioShock. It was very lovely, and not the sort of thing that wins Wisconsin.”
― Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators