Top 89 Columnist Quotes & Sayings

I don't do research for my novels. Obviously, in my other line of work as a reporter and a columnist, I've had the opportunity to get to know both social workers and TV talk-show hosts.

When a newspaper columnist wants to write about a novel, the rule is that you're supposed to have a 'hook,' an excuse, a timely reason to bring up the book in question.

In the age of social media, everyone's a newspaper columnist, exaggerating what they think and feel.

Having whipped single women into high marital panic-or "nuptialitis," as one columnist called it- the press hastened to soothe fretted brows with conjugal tonic.

Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse.

A politician wouldn't dream of being allowed to call a columnist the things a columnist is allowed to call a politician

As a columnist, I realize that whatever amount of corruption I expose, half my readers will block it out, although they may get a frisson of joy in the process.

My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.

I am the columnist who plays the would-this-happen-to-a-white-guy game because there are just too many double standards. But I'm equal opportunity with the game, including Hispanics, Asians, women and men.

I guess if you want me to stop writing horrible, mean takedowns of everyone, give me a really, really cushy columnist gig.

Sally Jenkins of the 'Washington Post' is the best sports columnist in the country. Second best is Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com, and third is Dan Wetzel on Yahoo!

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation.

I've been a war reporter and a human rights defender. A professor and a columnist. A diplomat and - by far most thrillingly - a mother. And what I've learned from all these experiences is that any change worth making is going to be hard. Period.

I've been a solo act, a columnist and worked from home, only relying on myself. Now I'm part of a team, a leader, and I have to fit in at a big corporation and deal with all the moving parts, all the different personalities. That has been a challenge, to be quite honest, that I've embraced.

The great 'New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson famously slept one year in a child's race-car bed. There he was, Pulitzer Prize and all, snoring as his feet dangled over the rear tires of Lightning McQueen.

I was a kid who sometimes got in trouble because I couldn't keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be an advantage when I became an opinion columnist.

I have a CS degree and a history that includes working as a software developer and being a computer magazine columnist back during the 1990s. I guess I simply paid attention to the social effects of the IT revolution as I lived through it.

The columnist like myself or people at Stanford University don't wake up in the morning and see their job outsourced. Yet we promote free markets. But we're not sensitive to what that does to other people who don't have our privilege.

All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your date requests, or posting a picture of your foot? All of that is more gripping and immediate and social than books.

I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me.

My father was one of 11. He was an attorney. My mother worked for the Syracuse newspaper as a columnist before she became a stay-at-home mother.

I wanted to be a columnist so badly that I took a huge pay cut to leave Forbes, which wouldn't give me a column, and join Newsday, which wanted my column for its Sunday business section.

A little irreverence is always important to being a columnist. I try to do that.

Teamwork is better than isolation, especially for a columnist.

As the saying goes: "If you're not part of the solution, you're a newspaper columnist."

When I was at The Orlando Sentinel as a sports columnist, it was embarrassing that I was the only black female sports columnist at a daily newspaper in North America.

As an advice columnist, I spend a lot of time reading through psychology journals to ensure that I give the most up-to-date advice.

I am a newspaper columnist and a professional screenwriter, but my real love is the novel for all the room it has for characters to come alive and breathe and face their challenges.

The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.

My agent pointed out one day that I had been quoted by a columnist in some American newspaper, and he noted with some glee that they simply identified me by name without reminding people who I was, apparently in the clear expectation that their readers would know who I am.

I wear two hats at the 'Wall Street Journal': one as a columnist, the other as the editor responsible for our editorial pages in Asia and Europe.

I know it's cheaper to fund an op-ed columnist than a team of reporters, but I think it confuses the mission of what these great journalistic brands are about.

The difference between a reporter, a newspaper columnist, a paid speaker, a television personality, a radio talk show host, a blogger, a movie producer, a publicist, and a political strategist, is growing less - and not more - distinct.

Lots of people ask me, 'What do you do?' Apparently, being a columnist, TV bird, all-round good egg, mother of three, and wife of one is not sufficient for them.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)

One of my lifelong hobbies has been to collect 'aptronyms' - the newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams's term for people whose names were curiously appropriate to, or provided ironic comment on, their occupations.

As anyone who has read 'Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin knows, it's quite possible to write an unreadable column without being a TV pundit. But if you want to be a consistently good columnist, you can't be on television.

A Republican establishment member in the media would be David Brooks in the New York Times, the so-called conservative columnist. He's basically a moderate. He favors big government if run by the people he thinks are smart. He's not crazy about conservatives.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people try their hand at this demanding profession (humor columnist). After a few months, almost all of them have given up and gone back to the ninth grade.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Colin Campbell says that every member of the Georgia General Assembly with an IQ above 85 should be required to wear a crash helmet. That should take about ... oh, say 15 helmets?

Donald Trump announced his no Muslims are allowed to come to the United States plan and that led to one of the greatest tweets of all time from New York Times columnist. Quote, "OK, I concede I picked the wrong day to modestly walk back my Trumpism as fascism column."

Peggy Noonan is not as good a columnist as my colleague Kathleen Parker, in my opinion, but they share something related to their Pulitzers. Kathleen won in in 2010. They won it for a similar reason. They broke from their crowd, and sprinted away. They delivered the politically unexpected take, at some peril to their readership.

A politician wouldn't dream of being allowed to call a columnist the things a columnist is allowed to call a politician.

Krugman has been a columnist for the Times for a long enough time, covering a sufficient variety of political events, for us to deduce that he is a political nitwit. Other Nobel laureates have been nitwits, for instance, Bertrand Russell. There are a lot of political nitwits in this world. Perhaps the Times could give Krugman a cooking column. He would be its Nobel Prise-winning cooking columnist.

I'm a sports columnist who specializes in social commentary.

I used to be a columnist for 'Golf Monthly' and have contributed articles for national newspapers based on the humour that is in abundance in the game, which is more than can be said of tennis.

I do feel haunted by some of the letters and the suffering people have endured. But I keep in mind that the people who write to me know that I am a journalist and an on-line advice columnist, not a social service professional.

Sometimes I'm very disappointed at some of the people in our family of communicators, whether it be a songwriter or a rapper that's always talking about negativity or a singer or a columnist or a network that basically gets off on just trying to create the negative.

A certain columnist has been banned from all Shubert openings. Now he can wait three days and go to their closings.

We know Roger Ebert loved the 'Sun-Times' and his career as a newspaper columnist. But ironically, it was his illness and losing his voice that caused him to explore another venue.

One of the differences between what happens when an author and a gossip columnist sit down to write a book is that the former tends to make every effort at disguising and protecting their sources, while the latter doesn't particularly care.

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches.

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong.

I always thought of myself as more of a columnist, but maybe a columnist who does reporting.

I think the only op-ed columnist in 'The Times' - where I read all of his stuff - is Paul Krugman.

Longevity, for a columnist, is a simple proposition: Once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax.

Being a TV comedian, actor, writer, columnist, and all that is quite helpful to me in acquiring wide varieties of knowledge, which is crucial for filmmaking.

A columnist is not a doctor, who diagnoses the disease and dispenses instant medicine. My job is to highlight problems, investigate issues, to provide factual information, and if necessary, goad the people into action - that too is not easy in the current political and business environment.