Jonnelle Marte

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Above all, do you understand that you are not as important as what you’re covering We are now in an era when the I-lost-my-laundry-while-covering-Yalta school of reporting has become an epidemic; when serious books that involve reporting often tend to be suffused with the author’s admiration of his own investigative techniques; when the narcissism of the press almost outstrips the narcissism elsewhere in the country. The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.

Poetry is part of everything. You can’t have a really good work if it’s not touched by poetry. Poetry manifests itself in millions of ways: as rhythm, metaphor, mood. Sometimes it’s a type of emotional outpouring or necessity that’s not expressed through characters but through feelings. To me, poetry is the tragic sense of man. It’s a way of seeing things in the most complete way, the most absolute, and, to a certain extent, the most perfect. Where there’s no poetry, there’s no beauty, and without beauty no kind of artistic work can exist.

You can ask the universe for all the signs you want, but ultimately, we see what we want to see when we’re ready to see it.