Top 27 Quotes by John Pomfret

Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

Srebrenica was a horrendous war crime and it had to be uncovered.

Working overseas is more difficult in that it's much more complicated to get people to open their hearts to you and to tell you information.

My main form of transportation at that time was a bicycle, because bicycles could move though the crowd.

When you do a job like this you have to like having cold sweat on your back.

The one indication that I got that I was doing the right job in Bosnia was that at different periods of time all the factions came down very hard on me.

In some ways the domestic reporting is a lot easier because Americans will talk to you about anything.

But on the other hand, in the midst of the chaos, you find normal people. You find people who are willing to risk their lives to tell you what they saw, even though they have no dog in the fight.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.