John Pomfret Quotes

• We live and learn, but not the wiser grow.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Difficult, Tell, Working

• Whereas with foreign coverage there’s a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.

   

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Foreign, Audience, Between

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

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Job, Uncategorized

  Tags in Cold, Back

• The work is a calling. It demands that type of obsession.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Demands, Calling, Obsession

• 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.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Job, Uncategorized

  Tags in Hard, Right

• 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.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wanted, Become, Living

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

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Journalism, Learned, Doing

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

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Crime

• One of the problems that we have as American journalists is that we bring the American cultural baggage with us and we plop it down and it follows us around and that’s just a fact of life.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Down, Around, American

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

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Bicycle, Though, Move

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

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Talk, Anything

• I’ve been shot at on numerous occasions.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Numerous, Occasions, Shot

• I went back to the States and started at a small newspaper in Riverside County, California, covering the police; I was making $280 a week covering the police.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Making, Small, Back

• I was posted to China in the summer of 1988, which was the greatest time ever, I think, to have been in China.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Summer, Greatest, Ever

• I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon’s trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Interest, Secret, Made

• I think to a certain extent in Bosnia and among the Hutus in Rwanda and also among the Tutsis in Rwanda who then took revenge on the Hutus, there is a sense of being swept up and a sense that the society in which they live has gone mad.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sense, Revenge, Live

• 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.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Seem, Security, Problems

• I think some of the best reporters are the ones who can really illustrate the differences between societies, at the same time trying to connect the fact that there are a lot of shared values in addition to those differences.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Same, Trying, Best

• I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.

  John Pomfret

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Numerous, Occasions, Threatened

John Pomfret (27)

Nationality:	American
Profession:	Journalist

About

John Pomfret was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He is an American journalist and author. He earned a BA and an MA degrees in East Asian Studies from Stanford University. He also studied at Nanjing University, China. He started his journalistic career at the Stanford Daily as a photographer. After two years with the Associated Press in New York, in 1988, he was sent to China as a foreign correspondent. He later served as the editor of the Washington Post′s weekend opinion section, Outlook. During his career, he received several awards, including 2003's Osborne Elliot Prize for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society and 2007's Shorenstein Prize for coverage of Asia. In 2011, he was award the Edward Weintal Award for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University for his work covering America's relations with China. He has written several books include: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom (won- Arthur Ross Book Award 2017) and Chinese Lessons.

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