“You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if ...” — Michael Hastings Quote

“You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it's medical school or law school.”

“I welcome all interviews with 'Rolling Stone' magazine, and I'm sure people will talk to me in the future.”

“I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.”

“I think it's very difficult to make people care about natives in another country.”

“Usually when reporting on powerful public figures, the press advisor and I would have had a conversation that established what journalists call 'ground rules,' placing restrictions on what can and cannot be reported.”

“I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.”

“Medical debts are the number-one cause of bankruptcy in America.”

“Every article I wrote in those days, every speech I made, is full of pleading for the recognition of lead poisoning as a real and serious medical problem.”

“We also have a program in place for low income people. A family of four making $26,000 a year can receive medical coverage, irrespective of citizenship or what documents.”

“There can be no stronger claim to a physician's assistance than at the time when death is imminent, a moral judgment implied by the state's own recognition of the legitimacy of medical procedures necessarily hastening the moment of impending death.”

“Although I completed two years of internship in various small hospitals, I decided against continuing my medical training. I was much more fascinated by the unsolved problems of medicine than by practicing it.”

“Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it's fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor, another who was a pharmacist, a brother who was an engineer. So my parents already had sensible children who would be able to make an actual living, and I think they felt comfortable sacrificing their one strange child.”