Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn
Martha Ellis Gellhornwas an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist, who is now considered one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. Gellhorn was also the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945. At the age of 89, ill and almost completely blind, she died in 1998 of an apparent suicide. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth8 November 1908
CitySt. Louis, MO
CountryUnited States of America
A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.
I feel very troubled in the head and heart.
From the earliest wars of men to our last heart-breaking worldwide effort, all we could do was kill ourselves. Now we are able to kill the future.
And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish.
I only knew about daily life. It was said, well, it isn't everybody's daily life. That is why I started.
The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable.
From two o'clock one afternoon until the ship docked in England again the next evening at seven, none of the medical personnel stopped work.
Germans trained in obedience and dedicated to moral whitewashing are not a new people, nor are they reliable partners for anyone else.
If I practised sex, out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it... seemed a defeat.
I used to write letters to the wounded in the Palace Hotel, and I used to drive a station wagon with blood in bottles to a battalion aid station.
Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.
What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.
the private conscience is the last and only protection of the civilized world.