Annie Leibovitz Quotes

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd probably be working in journalism.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

I've learned to accept that I'm a children's writer, even if it's not what I set out to become. It's what I should have been all along, and I'll stay in this role as long as I'm a writer.

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.

When I was in college, I did sort of want to be a journalist. Being an actor, you kind of have the same interest. You go into a story, and you tell it from your point of view for people who aren't there. That's what an actor does with a character. But the real life is more more interesting.

I've always thought of myself as a journalist; that was what I did.

I didn't go into journalism thinking it would solidify my identity. I did it because I needed to make a living, and I was proficient in writing. But in becoming a journalist, I learned about other people who felt like they were on the edges of American mainstream life.

It took me years to realize I wanted to be in journalism.

I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.

I studied journalism, though I never really became a scribe.

I was like, 'I have to start writing for myself, to show people what I can do and what my point of view is.'

Everything in life is writable.

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.

I find myself really feeling like it's possible that maybe the greater contribution I'm going to be able to make through this next phase of my life might be as a writer writing wonderful parts for women, or even writing wonderful parts for myself, you know?

My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.

I wanted to be a lawyer. Then a journalist. Actually, I graduated from university as a journalist.

I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.

When I took off from Providence, my only professional aspiration was what it had always been: I wanted to be a sportscaster. By the time I landed in the desert, I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to be a writer.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.