David Grann
One of the things I believe strongly in is developing institutions - legal, press, bureaucracies, academies - that are rooted in the pursuit of impartial truth. That aren't simply just bent to partisan ends or are corrupted for the powerful or for other ulterior motives.Collection: Legal
Like many people, I kicked around, struggled to become a writer, finally got my first full-time job around 27, 28, at 'The Hill' newspaper. They hired me as a copy editor, which was kind of funny because I'm semi-blind because I have an eye disorder.Collection: Funny
The amazing thing about the sea is that it is perhaps the last truly unexplored frontier; most oceanographers estimate that only about ninety-five per cent of the sea has been studied. Meanwhile, the oceans are believed to contain more animals than exist on land, a majority of which have never been discovered.Collection: Amazing
The Osage have this lovely phrase: 'Travelers in the Mist.' It was the term for part of an Osage clan that would take the lead whenever the tribe was venturing into unfamiliar realms. And, in a way, we are all travelers in the mist. The challenge is that, as writers, we sometimes want to ignore this murkiness, or we want to write around it.
My night stand is more like a geological structure: a bunch of books piled on the floor with its own strata.
A lot of the stories I write about have an element of mystery. They're crime stories or conspiracy stories or quests. They do have built into them revelations and twists. But the revelations, to me, come from seeing history as it's unfolding, or life as it's unfolding.
The way we live history is not the way historians tell history. Our lives are messy and chaotic and bewildering.
Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.
If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story.
The biggest difference with Twitter and writing long form is you're part of a virtual community where you know people, or think you know them, through their links.
There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.
Honestly, I had no idea what to do on Twitter when I started. I didn't follow it enough. Slowly, though, I started to realize what I'm okay at. Like, I'm just not particularly witty.
I'm kind of odd; I'm a technophobe who isn't a technophobe. I'm afraid of new things, but eventually I love them. That happened with Twitter.
When I work on stories, I tend to be pretty obsessive.
It's funny: I don't know if she babysat, but I spent time with Judy Blume when I was little.
I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.
For a while, when I got out of college, I tried to write fiction. I'd grown up more around novelists, and my initial attraction was to write fiction. But I was much less suited for it. I always struggled to figure out what people were saying or doing in a particular moment.
I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.
Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.
When I work on stories, I tend to lose sight of everything else. I forget to pay bills or to shave. I don't change my clothes as often as I should.
I don't camp; I don't hike. I hate bugs, and I'm phobic of snakes.
You think of the rainforest as this incredibly abundant place of fauna and animals and flora. This great, rich wilderness. And yet it is such a biological battlefield in which everything is competing.
The giant squid is the perfect embodiment of a sea monster: it is huge, it has tentacles, it has big eyes, and it is absolutely frightening-looking. But, most important, it is real. Unlike the Loch Ness monster, we know it's out there.
Because many squid have brain nerve fibres that are hundreds of times thicker than those of humans, neuroscientists have long used them for research. These nerve fibres have led to so many breakthroughs in the study of neurons that many scientists joke that the squid should receive a Nobel Prize.
We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.
Heroes have always served as a reflection of their times, a template of who we are and what we want to be.
The political hero is not like the sports champion or matinee idol or daring inventor; like the war hero, he is born only of tragedy.
The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.
Base stealers are often considered their own breed: reckless, egocentric, even a touch mad.
I love the magic of stories and the power of stories.
Baseball, of course, has long been played under the burden of metaphor. More so than basketball or football, it is supposed to represent something larger than itself.
Although baseball actually began as a game played largely by urban toughs, its image was soon reconstructed to mirror the country's pastoral myth.
The romantic notion of the clubhouse as a traveling fraternity of working-class heroes - the boys of summer - is perhaps the most potent in all of baseball.
Barry Bonds was still young when his father's fall began. Although Bobby still continued to put up good numbers year after year, he never lived up to expectations.
Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead.
After a traumatic event, people tend to store a series of memories and arrange them into a meaningful narrative. They remember exactly where they were and to whom they were talking.
I was not very good at newspaper reporting. I'm just not quick enough, and I always tend to tell things as stories.
I'm sure every author has their own process.
I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.
If someone told me I had to stop writing stories, that would be the end of me.
A lot of the stuff I tweet is out of childlike curiosity.
To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it.
It was a very circuitous path. It was not very linear - I floundered about for many years.
I was a schoolteacher; I taught seventh and eighth grade, and I tried to write fiction on the side.
I tried a few grad school programs because I didn't know how to make it... Eventually, I was desperate for a job, and there was a new newspaper opening up in Washington, D.C., called 'The Hill.' Even though my interest in politics wasn't huge, they gave me a job as a copy editor.
Most of Gingrich's moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology.
In Brazil, the history of the interaction between blancos and indios - whites and Indians - often reads like an extended epitaph. Tribes were wiped out by disease and massacres; languages and songs were obliterated.
I spend my life mostly disproving conspiracies.
I wish a book could reach as many people as film, but we have to be realistic about it.
The only thing as murky as a conspiracy is what's happening in Hollywood.