"Call it vanity, call it arrogant presumption, call it what you wish, but I would grope for the nearest open grave if I had no newspaper to work for, no need to search for and sometimes find the winged word that just fits, no keen wonder over what each unfolding day may bring"
About this Quote
Considine doesn’t apologize for needing the newsroom; he dares you to call it a character flaw and then shows you why the accusation misses the point. The line opens like a preemptive heckle - “vanity,” “arrogant presumption” - the kinds of charges routinely leveled at columnists who seem too enamored of their own voices. Then he swerves: without the work, he’d “grope for the nearest open grave.” It’s melodramatic on purpose. Journalism here isn’t a job or even a calling; it’s an existential tether, the thing that keeps his mind from collapsing inward.
The engine of the quote is craft lust: “the winged word that just fits.” That phrase treats language as prey and prize at once, something you hunt, sometimes miss, sometimes miraculously pin to the page. “Winged” implies speed and escape - the right word doesn’t sit still for you. You have to earn it, which is why the supposed vanity reads more like compulsion. He’s not bragging about being right; he’s confessing to being addicted to the chase.
Context matters: Considine came up in an era when the newspaper was the country’s central nervous system and the columnist was both witness and performer. His “keen wonder” at the day’s unfolding carries a faint wartime and postwar charge - history arriving on deadline, demanding sentences by nightfall. The subtext is a defense of curiosity as survival: take away the daily search, and you don’t just silence the writer; you strip him of a reason to stay alert to life itself.
The engine of the quote is craft lust: “the winged word that just fits.” That phrase treats language as prey and prize at once, something you hunt, sometimes miss, sometimes miraculously pin to the page. “Winged” implies speed and escape - the right word doesn’t sit still for you. You have to earn it, which is why the supposed vanity reads more like compulsion. He’s not bragging about being right; he’s confessing to being addicted to the chase.
Context matters: Considine came up in an era when the newspaper was the country’s central nervous system and the columnist was both witness and performer. His “keen wonder” at the day’s unfolding carries a faint wartime and postwar charge - history arriving on deadline, demanding sentences by nightfall. The subtext is a defense of curiosity as survival: take away the daily search, and you don’t just silence the writer; you strip him of a reason to stay alert to life itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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