This partial quote has recently become the mantra running through my head. I have spent the last two days on the Hill, in tens of press gaggles with hours of interviews and floor statements on my voice recorder. And, if I am lucky, three quotes end up in the final draft.
But I can't imagine a reporter thinking he or she is doing enough reporting if all of it goes into the story.
Still it can be frustrating to have your feet kill, after running around, have pages of great and informative quotes, and have whole grafs unpublished, full issues untouched.
At moments like that, I think "iceberg" and smile.
Incidentally, I have found the fuller quote to be true for fiction writing as well, where an author knows so much more about his or her characters than ends up on the page.
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing”
—Ernest Hemingway
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