Frontline Journalist Quotes

“Robinson had thoroughly enjoyed her evening at the opera. Her only previous experience had been a performance of Wagner, to which the Assistant Commissioner, an avid Wagnerian, had taken her a year before. It was a strange but admirable British characteristic, she had thought at the time, how little antagonism was directed against the great artistic creations of the enemy, even of Richard Wagner, the great idol of Hitler.”
― Mark Ellis, The French Spy

“I want you to write like Alice Munro.  Stir the world.  Make people see the horror; show them their suffering relatives; show them that they’re not safe.  Let them know that they can’t even begin to imagine what’s happening here.  By making my reality more compelling than reality television is the only way you’ll get their attention.
Psychotic and cynical.
Who can tell the difference anymore between a severed head and a special effect?  Can you?  I doubt it, and I know you’ve been in the middle of it all and seen the damage first-hand.”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta

“She polished her words like smooth river rocks lying perfectly organized in brilliant rainbow shades under crystal clear, slow moving water.”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta

“What was once a home she had taken apart one piece at a time, one day...She sold her belongings for money to buy food.  First the luxuries: a small statue, a picture.  Then the items with more utility: a lamp, a kettle.  Clothes left the closet at a rate of a garment a day…she burned everything in the basement first; then everything in the attic.  It lasted weeks, not months.  Though tempted, she left the roof alone.  She stripped the second floor, and the stairs.  She extracted every possible calorie from the kitchen.  she wasn’t working alone, because neighbourhood pirates simultaneously stole anything of value outside: door and window frames, fencing, stucco.  They pillaged her yard.  Breaking in was a boundary her neigbours had not yet crossed.  But the animals had.  Rats and mice and other vermin found the cracks without much effort.  Like her, they sought warmth and scraps of food.  With great reluctance, she roasted the ones she could catch.  She spent her nights fighting off the ones that escaped.”
― John Payton Foden, Magenta