Quotes from Nick McDonell

Someone once accused me of slumming. I don't know what that means. I play basketball. And through that, I get to see a world that is not smart-kid world.

The more I have written, the less it has been about exploring myself, and the more it has been about exploring the world around me.

I'm terrified of getting what I'm not deserving of, feeling that I've got something for nothing... at the expense of brilliant starving writers all over the world. But I have to hope these people who are helping me have integrity.

I played football; I was a running back, and I took a hit, and I had a hairline fracture in my leg which no one spotted, and I was playing basketball all winter and it got worse. And then I was long jumping, about 20 feet, and I landed one time and there was this big crack, and all the bones were jutting out of my leg.

I was brought up to believe you should always live the most interesting life you can.

I know that I work hard for the things that I do, and I really go to the places that I report on.

In the beginning of college I wanted to be an English major, but then I became interested in international relations.

I'm an inexperienced reporter, and I'm still learning.

I'm not good enough to write about my friends, who are all brilliant and sophisticated.

The world will spiral out from underneath you, and you will find nothing to hold on to because you are either too smart or too dumb to find God…

What do you want? Because if you don't want something, you've got nothing. You are adrift, you are washed away, and then buried under the snow and the shadows. And when, in the spring, the snow melts, no one will remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere.

The foreign policy establishment depends unabashedly on lies.

Fiindca toata lumea are o notiune exacta despre cum trebuie sa traiasca..

What do you want? Because if you don't want something, you've got nothing.You are drift, you are washed away, and then buried under the snow and the shadows. And then when, in the spring, the snow melts, no one will remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere.

What do you want? Because if you don't want something, you've got nothing. You are adrift, you are washed away, and then buried under the snow and the shadows. And when, in the spring, the snow melts, no one will remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere.

Knowledge is more virtue than power.

Forse le cose stanno così per tutti: semplicemente tu sei più debole, oppure meno fortunato, o hai visto qualcosa che tutti loro non hanno notato. Hai visto quanto è lunga la strada che ti aspetta, spazzata dal vento o bruciata dal sole cocente o ricoperta di neve, polvere o bitume, ammantata di tenebre o luminosa e chiara da farti chiudere gli occhi: comunque, in ogni caso, è spaventosamente vuota.

Everyone knows what a penny dropped form the top of the Empire State Building can do. So if it started to rain pennies, millions of pennies, and these tiny bronze disks were streaking to the earth, catching the sunlight, the bronze rain would explode into the pavement and leave craters and you would run for cover. And there you would be, hiding under some overhand with everyone else who has run for cover, pressed in against the other bodies taking shelter. If it started raining money.

Because really, when you get down on your knees on the pew, you're just giving God a blow job.

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable... I hope I have that going forward.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.