Top 50 Jessica Savitch Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.”

— Jessica Savitch

2. “For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work.”

— Jessica Savitch

3. “News events are like Texas weather. If you don’t like it, wait a minute.”

— Jessica Savitch

4. “The news anchor is exactly that – an anchor, a center, a focus.”

— Jessica Savitch

5. “Never refuse an assignment except when there is a conflict of interest, a potential of danger to you or your family, or you hold a strongly biased attitude about the subject under focus.”

— Jessica Savitch

6. “My current goal is to place a moratorium on goals.”

— Jessica Savitch

7. “Newscasters cannot call attention to themselves by being too attractive or too unattractive.”

— Jessica Savitch

8. “The code of the road is, if there is anything to eat, eat; if there is a place to sit, sit; if there is a restroom, go.”

— Jessica Savitch

9. “Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.”

— Jessica Savitch

10. “The single life is not one I willingly chose for myself.”

— Jessica Savitch

11. “When I was a little girl in the 1950s, it would not have been possible for me to say, I want to be an anchorwoman when I grow up.”

— Jessica Savitch

12. “Television news is a delicate balance of serving public good and private gain.”

— Jessica Savitch

13. “By far my most perilous assignment was covering a tank car explosion.”

— Jessica Savitch

14. “It is my belief that one’s salary is between an individual and the IRS.”

— Jessica Savitch

15. “What is the value of sticking a microphone in a man’s face right after he has learned of his wife’s death?”

— Jessica Savitch

16. “News reporting is a cycle: No matter how much you work at sending a message, it’s only successful if it’s received.”

— Jessica Savitch

17. “The relationship between talent and management is uneasy, at best.”

— Jessica Savitch

18. “It had not occurred to me that marriage requires the same effort as a career. And unlike a career, marriage requires a joint effort.”

— Jessica Savitch

19. “The bad news is that 50 people died in a hotel fire; the good news is that we got exclusive footage.”

— Jessica Savitch

20. “My most lucrative job in college was a stint as the regional Dodge Girl.”

— Jessica Savitch

21. “Women may not have it easy, but we are given a fairer chance to reach for the top.”

— Jessica Savitch

22. “Every time I am in danger of believing the glamour of my own press, some incident inevitably brings me back to earth.”

— Jessica Savitch

23. “The latest wrinkle is on wrinkles. There is a widespread belief that women can’t grow old in television news.”

— Jessica Savitch

24. “I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.”

— Jessica Savitch

25. “Texas was defined by its larger-than-life characters, particularly politicians.”

— Jessica Savitch

26. “You can easily die racing to cover a bank robbery as you can in a war zone.”

— Jessica Savitch

27. “Some news managers have been slow to grasp that good television news is always substance over form.”

— Jessica Savitch

28. “Our free enterprise system of disseminating information is collectively referred to as The Media. But there is no collective.”

— Jessica Savitch

29. “When I first anchored in 1970, I had never seen a woman anchor a news show.”

— Jessica Savitch

30. “The most important event I covered was the Panama Canal debate, which dragged on for months.”

— Jessica Savitch

31. “To get it first is important – but more important is to get it right.”

— Jessica Savitch

32. “I have had a lifelong phobia of snakes.”

— Jessica Savitch

33. “Being a novelty had its advantages.”

— Jessica Savitch

34. “Walking into a room filled with people you don’t know but who know you brings out your worst vulnerabilities.”

— Jessica Savitch

35. “In the beginning, my mother humored me when I told her I wanted to be a reporter.”

— Jessica Savitch

36. “News events cannot be controlled, nor can newscasts be mapped out like entertainment shows.”

— Jessica Savitch

37. “A fact of modern life is that it takes women longer to get ready than men.”

— Jessica Savitch

38. “In real life, events seem much less dramatic.”

— Jessica Savitch

39. “When for so long you can’t get a job for reasons that seem specious, you you finally do have it, you are constantly afraid of losing it.”

— Jessica Savitch

40. “Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.”

— Jessica Savitch

41. “In every interview I have ever read or seen or taken part in, the final question in our future-oriented society is always, What next?”

— Jessica Savitch

42. “How valuable NBC Magazine was in my career is questionable.”

— Jessica Savitch

43. “A press card does not provide you with an invisible shield. You’re flesh and blood.”

— Jessica Savitch

44. “The minute viewers callin or write about your looks, they were not listening to what you were saying.”

— Jessica Savitch

45. “The idea of stardom was difficult to grasp. It was like being schizophrenic; there was her, the woman on television, and the real me.”

— Jessica Savitch

46. “Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.”

— Jessica Savitch

47. “I very much wanted to be accepted by my peers, to be considered a serious journalist.”

— Jessica Savitch

48. “I hadn’t realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is.”

— Jessica Savitch

49. “Mistakes are not always the result of someone’s ineptitude.”

— Jessica Savitch

50. “I don’t exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?”

— Jessica Savitch