Laura Poitras Quotes

We're definitely in an era where the government wants to keep more secrets and it wants to come after anyone who's exposing those secrets and in many cases exposing government illegality. They're coming after the journalists and they're coming after the whistleblowers. It's not a good sign if the government is expending much energy trying to find out who journalists are talking to. ~ Laura Poitras

Those who are experts in the fields of surveillance, privacy, and technology say that there need to be two tracks: a policy track and a technology track. The technology track is encryption. It works and if you want privacy, then you should use it. ~ Laura Poitras

When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I'm grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world. ~ Edward Snowden

Just consider the CIA and its effort to suppress the Senate's review of its torture program. Take in the fact that we live in a country that a) legalized torture and b) where no one was ever held to account for it, and now the government's internal look at what happened is being suppressed by the CIA. That's a frightening landscape to be in. ~ Laura Poitras

Snowden has presented us with choices on how we want to move forward into the future. We're at a crossroads and we still don't quite know which path we're going to take. Without Snowden, just about everyone would still be in the dark about the amount of information the government is collecting. I think that Snowden has changed consciousness about the dangers of surveillance. ~ Laura Poitras

I think it's radical to censor information because the government asks you to. That's radical. ~ Laura Poitras

The fact that the CIA knew that two of the 9/11 hijackers were entering the United States and didn't notify the FBI and that nobody lost their job is shocking. Instead, we occupied Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. I mean, how did those choices get made? ~ Laura Poitras

In all my work, I'm interested in understanding big issues through the lives of individuals ... ~ Laura Poitras

Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head. It must have been like that with you and Snowden. But what if he'd been a graying guy with the same documents and far less intelligent things to say about them? In other words, how exactly did who he was make your movie and remake our world? ~ Laura Poitras

In terms of sources coming forward, I really reject this idea of talking about one, two, three sources. There are many sources that have informed the reporting we've done and I think that Americans owe them a debt of gratitude for taking the risk they do. ~ Laura Poitras

People are starting to understand that the devices we carry with us reveal our location, who we're talking to, and all kinds of other information. ~ Laura Poitras

The free software community should be supported more widely. I'm totally in solidarity with what they do. ~ Laura Poitras

I think one of the most shocking things is how little our elected officials knew about what the NSA was doing. Congress is learning from the reporting and that's staggering. Snowden and [former NSA employee] William Binney, who's also in the film as a whistleblower from a different generation, are technical people who understand the dangers. ~ Laura Poitras

There are people who are always going to try to engage in activity that is illegal and they're going to try to subvert surveillance. But everybody should not give up their liberties and rights to privacy because some people are going to [do that]. We shouldn't stop or limit our basic liberties because some people are going to engage in criminal activities. ~ Laura Poitras

Certainly, when it comes to my profession as a journalist, that allows the government to trace what you're reporting, who you're talking to, and where you've been. So no matter whether or not I have a commitment to protect my sources, the government may still have information that might allow them to identify whom I'm talking to. ~ Laura Poitras

...one of the main questions for me is in the genre of dealing with real life: how to deal with it formally. There is a standard set of formal expressions that are used in traditional journalism. And some of them are really necessary, like fact-checking. But my conviction is that, now more than ever, real life is much stranger than any fiction one could imagine. So somehow the forms of reporting have to become crazier and stranger, too. Otherwise they are not going to be "documentary" enough, they are not going to live up to what's happening. ~ Hito Steyerl

Documentarian Laura Poitras has crafted a first-rate Hitchcockian-type thriller telling the story of Edward Snowden. ~ Leonard Maltin

When the most important decisions are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control. ~ Laura Poitras

When I'm working I wear so much makeup, and when I'm out with my friends I wear makeup, so sometimes at school I'm just like, 'Today is not much of a makeup day - foundation, chapstick - done.' ~ Laura Marano

I'm obsessed with 'Homeland.' It's not even okay. ~ Laura Prepon

All emotion receded, pulled out like low tide, leaving my brain an empty ocean bottom ~ Laura Wiess

Be a good girl," she said. "I hope you'll be a good sister to Laura. I know you try to be." I nodded. I didn't know what to say. I felt I was the victim of an injustice: why was it always me who was supposed to be a good sister to Laura, instead of the other way around? Surely my mother loved Laura more than she loved me. ~ Margaret Atwood

Just a few feet behind them, I can't help thinking about a line from the battered Shakespeare in my bag: "A swan trooping among crows." Except in this case it's the opposite: I am a crow trooping after swans. ~ Laura Bradley Rede

Knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself. ~ Laura Dave

When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation ... Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame. ~ Laura Riding

There's no great loss without some small gain. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

They were alone on sixty-four million square miles of ocean. A month earlier, ~ Laura Hillenbrand

It's not easy to have the job of president. It's not easy to run for it. And it's not a job for the feint of heart. ~ Laura Bush

...I think a lot of my misery was me hating me, and hating me made me hate everyone else. I felt like such a punk, I felt so weak. I really was a coward. I never stood up for myself. I mean, I stood up for myself as we associate standing up for yourself -- fighting and violence. But that's not standing up for yourself. I mean standing up for myself like thinking for myself. Now, I feel more ok with myself. I'm feeling stronger in my abilities every day, and the world just opens up. You really can do anything, you can shape your life any way you want it to be. Because prison isn't the great prison. Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking. ~ Laura Bates

I don't know what to make of that. "But you've been alive to witness thousands of years of human history. You must've seen love at some point during all that time." After all, he's the one who's always waxing on about how ageless he is.
"Yes," he says slowly. "But not like this."
Not as a living, breathing, feeling thing. And somehow that makes all the difference. ~ Laura Thalassa

The new manager wants Tam to 'joosh it up a bit', make it more accessible. ~ Laura Marney

When I stopped eating meat, I fell in love with East Indian food - there's so much selection, and they use the most beautiful spices. ~ Laura Mennell

You don't have to run away from life your whole life. You can really live. You can change. And you can be an agent of change. ~ Laura Dern

Since he couldn't give in to what he really wanted from Kady Dresco, he picked on her and snarked at her and generally gave her grief. And she gave it right back. Sometimes he thought they were engaged in one long round of mental foreplay. ~ Laura Kaye

Every decision we make in our life, for
whatever reason we make it, molds us as who we are. What matters is what you do with it. ~ Laura Burks

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep. ~ Laura Riding

I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school. ~ Laura Bush

You will see the world. You will have love affairs with boys who see past a pretty face. You will be strong. You will call and tell me about it. ~ Laura Ruby

You can have anything you want, but not everything. If it was really important to spend an afternoon at my daughter's school, I had to think, how was I going to organize my life to do that? How could I become more efficient? I always tried to put my priorities on the table, personal and professional, and work around them. ~ Laura Lang

Lover please do not fall to your knees it's not like I believe in everlasting love ~ Laura Marling

That is love, baby girl. Working hard when we don't feel like it. ~ Laura Dave

It isn't such a bad thing to always know that someone on the other side of the world cares about you. ~ Laura Fraser

Asking ourselves, 'Where am I right now?' gives us a chance to step outside the internal dialogue for a moment of peace. Look around you, take a deep breath and notice what you see, hear and feel. Present moment awareness is the point of power and choice. It frees us from our compulsive thoughts. ~ Laura Harvey

An educated child is better equipped to handle all the challenges of life, from finding work to avoiding diseases like HIV/AIDS. ~ Laura Bush

A child in the position of confirming a negative stereotype may respond with especially intense anxiety and reduced motivation, amplifying a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. ~ Laura Beck

Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom's voice came to me, repeating things she'd said for months. Like, "My skin is melting off my face, isn't it?" And, "My whole body feels dead from the crap they're pouring into me. Do I look green to you?" And, "When I'm naked, I can see my heart beating. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Rus, dancing alongside Roza like a monstrous, bedraggled pony. ~ Laura Ruby

Charlie Tilghman, who flies a restored B-24 for the Commemorative Air Force, taught me about flying the Liberator. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

What the most successful people know about weekends is that life cannot happen only in the future. It cannot wait for some day when we are less tired or less busy. If you work long hours, then weekends are key to feeling like you have a life that is broader than your professional identity - even if, and probably because, you take that identity very seriously. ~ Laura Vanderkam

Courteous men learn courtesy from the discourteous. ~ Laura Fitzgerald

The farmhouse was ample in size and very well kept, the presence of two separate clotheslines and dozens of garments in various sizes the only outward indication that a family of seven lived inside. A smaller home situated slightly to the right was where Esther's grandparents lived. Claire knew from their many conversations that elderly members of the community did not go into nursing homes. Rather, they turned the family farm over to their children and assisted in ways their increased age allowed. ~ Laura Bradford

She waits for his reprimand or words of disapproval.
He kisses her instead. Hard. Lips demanding, fingers tightening on her chin. He consumes her with this single act. ~ Laura Kreitzer