Foreign Correspondent Quotes

I was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the mid-'90s.

I was working in the same building as U.S. News & World Report, and I banged on the door and said, "I'm ready to go." And they said, "What's your combat experience?" I said, "Does my parents' divorce count? It was pretty rough." Then they said, "What's your reporting experience?" And I said, "I covered the women's volleyball team in college exceptionally well." The guy was like, "You are so not ready to be a war correspondent."

In 1993, I joined Reuters as a correspondent in its Cairo bureau.

I had been a foreign correspondent in Japan for the 'Wall Street Journal' when my editor there became Washington bureau chief - this was 2007 - and he said, 'How would you like to go to Iowa and cover Hillary Clinton?' I was 28. I went to Iowa.

There is nothing remarkable about having media and foreign embassy contacts. When I lived in Saudi Arabia as a journalist, this was a regular occurrence.

A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: "You don't seem smart enough to be so good at what you're doing. Do you have an explanation?"

Nothing is better for a young journalist than to go and write about something that other people don't know about. If you can afford to send yourself to some foreign part, I still think that's by far the best way to break in.

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

I think in Baghdad, any westerner, journalist or not, has a big dollar sign on his or her forehead. So, first and foremost, you are a ticket to unimaginable wealth. And that makes any trips out of the safe zones very risky.

It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

The first time I met President Obama was 2006 in Baghdad. He was the senator from Illinois; it was a month before he actually ended up declaring. He had to come to Baghdad to kind of check that box, and I was the correspondent for 'Newsweek' at the time.

I work for a big newspaper, and I guess I'm an insider. I don't have the luxury of calling myself a foreign correspondent and just swooping in and then leaving.

Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave.

The idea of being a foreign correspondent and wandering the world and witnessing great events, having adventures and covering the activities of world leaders, appealed to me greatly. It was a very glamorous life in those days.

In Beijing, the joke among hacks is that, after the drive in from the airport, you are ready to write a column; after a month, you feel the stirrings of an idea-book; but after a year, you struggle to write anything at all, because you've finally discovered just how much you don't know.

I began college during the Iraq War and initially wanted to be a foreign correspondent.

I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.

The United States Central Command of the Armed Forces has asked Geraldo Rivera to leave Iraq. It should also be noted that the only three other people that the U.S. military has asked to leave Iraq are Saddam Hussein and his two sons.

On the flip side, I enjoy covering the Arab world, I've spent my entire career here in the Middle East, but I would never call myself a war correspondent.

My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.

Non-fiction about personal subjects is going to attract more user comments than a foreign correspondent writing from Syria - unfortunately.

In late 2009, I returned to Baghdad after a lengthy absence. I was living alone, in the Hamra Hotel, the twice bombed-out de facto international news bureau.

Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country.

I'm interested in Russian language, culture, history... and I lived there, for four years, as a reporter for the Washington Post and have visited many times since.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.