It is gray and rainy Brussels Tuesday morning. Would it be really unjust to say it is just Tuesday morning in Brussels? Three people leave their cosy editorial lair on Rue Montoyer and go hunting. Armed with one light dictaphone between two, supported with a heavy pro DSLR operated by our Italian condottiere-photographer, shielded with hope and experience, through the cold drizzle and sudden wind blows of mercy to their umbrellas, the Editors’ raiding party approaches parliamentary headquarters… They are hunting for quotes.

We need quotes. There are the red cells carrying precious oxygen of wit through the bloodstream of our discourse. A good quote is like peanut butter on your toast, a drip of tabasco in your Bloody Mary, a seventh-level spell you cast upon your readers, the primo mobile of your text, the salt of the earth, Amen.

A wall in Dublin (photo: author)

We fish for quotes in sometimes troubled and muddy waters in the pool of politics’ opinion. We comb the internet, we sieve through the piles of parliamentary reports. We run here our own little Bletchley Park where, in forage for an ultra-quote, we listen to endless hours of speeches of the Members, from Adamou to Zwiefka, from Cohn-Bendit to Farage.

It is better to be quotable than to be honest, said guess or google who. The politicians we interview try hard to be both. We do support them – wholeheartedly and philanthropically – for a common good.

Once we pin down an attractive quote and before we pin it up on our page it has to be translated into 22 languages. Good luck, but remember, that a hemicycle is not half a bike. Here you can observe a sprout of so called internal culture: we evoke this meant-to-be-funny-haha slogan from EP website launch campaign in 2005 to boast to our colleagues that we can translate nearly anything. 

Some unidentified misogynist polyglot insisted that translations, like women, could be either faithful or beautiful. This time, for a change, I believe, the Members would support the Editors engaged in their daily struggle between sense and sex appeal. 

Some of my colleagues announced some time ago an internal Web Communication contest for the quintessential empty quote. We have a universal winner. I would daresay it can be applied to the very craftsmanship of quoting and to the art of being quoted. And here goes, the quintessential quotoid: enormous progress has been made, but there is still a lot to do.