Quote Manipulation Quotes

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

Journalists have misquoted people for so long–and quoted them out of context–that many people like to have their words on record [in writing]. I don’t want someone taking half a sentence or paraphrasing me… Just too much risk.

I would say to people of a libertarian conservative position on an issue, do not do a taped interview. You're going to come out looking really bad. No matter what you say, no matter how eloquently you answer a question, your answer is not going to be what you said.

I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.

What happens often - although I'm not particularly a victim of this sort of thing - is that somebody will make a quote, or invent a remark and it gets printed, ends up on the 'net and it becomes currency. And some of them are so bizarre!

So you can say whatever you want and quote me however you want about politics and make the next payday, and that's fine because I'm making that deal with you, but just mention the movie along the way, OK?

With no more than six levels of misquotation, any statement can be made to say whatever you wish.

A newspaperman said, 'You have to have a team in New York.' I replied, 'Who says you have to have a team in New York?' What came out in the papers was a headline that said, Giles Says, 'Who needs New York?' I confess that quote bothered me, and there seemed to be no way to dispose of it. It was repeated again and again.

Since liberals never print retractions, they can say anything. What they said in the past is always deemed inadmissible and unfair to quote.

I rarely find that things put in quotes, attributed to me, are things that I said -certainly in the context in which they are presented.

Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.

I've been really upset sometimes when I've been misquoted. And it's the one thing they use in big print. Or it's taken out of context. Thoughts are fluid and words are sticky. That's the thing.

I'm constantly playing this game in my head where I'm thinking, 'Can this quote be pared down and misinterpreted?' It doesn't matter what outlet I'm talking to and how comprehensive the interview is, because I have to think in terms of, 'Right, but 'People' magazine could just take this one quote and take it out of context.'

It's the nature of cable news that we [TV hosts] do a lot of clipping and quoting of other broadcasts and outlets, sometimes to make a narrative point, sometimes to make a political one, and sometimes just to make a joke.

I've been so mutilated by a lot of articles. I know I haven't said a lot of things I'm quoted as saying in the papers.

I think quotes are very dangerous things.

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.

If you can't find the exact quote you want, make it up.

In a print interview, as you may or may not know, they [editors] can do whatever they want. And they do. This is why most people are more hesitant to do print, because they can change it, and they do change it. They even change things that are in quotation marks, which is a pet peeve of mine. I've said to numerous reporters, "Would you read me back my direct quotes?" And they always say no. They always say that's against the policy.

Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses.