In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

by Lindsey Hilsum

In her last week at Yale, she spent her nights holed up in the library with her coffee pot, desperately darting about like the Mad Hatter, from one stack of books to another, finishing papers so she could graduate. She had missed all deadlines for scholarships, grants, and fellowships. Through the four years, however, she had developed something of a philosophy, a combination of ambition and fatalism, as she explained in a piece entitled “Running Out of Time.” YALE DAILY NEWS, COMMENCEMENT, 1978 It doesn’t matter if you mess up, choose the wrong road, flop in Vegas. What’s important is to throw yourself in head first, to “go for the gusto.” And if you blow it, you blow it. What we have to worry about now is success. Once you’re successful, it becomes embarrassing to make mistakes, and more difficult to grab onto the nearest straw and hold on. You can always be a star, so what’s the rush?