Quotes About John Hersey

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time . . . the moment when the atomic bomb flashed over Hiroshima . . . .

America is on its way into Europe. You can be as isolationist as you want to be, but there is a fact. Our armies are on their way in. Just as truly as Europe once invaded us, with wave after wave of immigrants, now we are invading Europe, with wave after wave of sons of immigrants.

Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.