Quotes by Philip Gourevitch

“The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. It was the most efficient mass killings since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“Look around. Its harder and harder to find good fiction in mainstream magazines. I want this magazine to appeal to people interested in longform writing. This is anti-blog. Its writing worth the investment of time.”

“These interviews were truly like nothing I had read before, ... On the other hand, they reminded me of everything from Studs Terkel to Bertolt Brecht. They offer a funny, weird glimpse of how Chinese society works.”

“Administration officials took to telling reporters that Washington was contributing to a public-health initiative in Uganda to clean up more than ten thousand Rwandan corpses from the shores of Lake Victoria.”

“Hes a villain who doesnt need to be vilified. He does it himself, ... He wanted to be a very good bad guy.”

“I cant imagine trying to second guess what George Plimpton would do, ... The magazine has this tremendous tailwind moving it along, but there also has to be room to reconnect to a new time. These new articles will have a distinctive flavor and will address themselves to the world at large.”

“It can be frustrating,”

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.

This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

The Wests post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

I couldnt help thinking how well Cain had prospered after killing his brother: he founded the first city--and, although we dont like to talk about it all that much, we are all his children.