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" If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
You
Way
Us
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" Nantucket's English settlers, who first disembarked on the island in 1659, had been mindful of the sea's dangers. They had hoped to earn their livelihoods not as fishermen but as farmers and shepherds on this grassy isle dotted with ponds, where no wolves preyed. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Farmers
Sea
Earn
" I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
True
Follow
True Love
" We think of Washington as the defensive-minded pragmatist who won the Revolution by avoiding unnecessary risks on the battlefield. But that was not how he started out. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Washington
Risks
Revolution
" You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Home
Lose
IQ
" When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Creative
God
Work
" It is impossible to say when 37-year-old Benedict Arnold first met 18-year-old Peggy Shippen, but we do know that on September 25, 1778, he wrote her a love letter - much of it an exact copy of one he'd sent to another woman six months before. But if the overheated rhetoric was recycled, Arnold's passion was genuine. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Impossible
Love
Passion
" Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Think
Interesting
People
" I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Working
History
Myself
" I don't subscribe to the idea that the founders or anyone else were somehow better than us and that we have to live up to their example. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Us
Idea
Example
" For the very young, there's nothing better than Mother Goose and anything by Dr. Seuss for the rhythms and language. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Nothing
Better
Language
" I had a great AP U.S. History teacher in Pittsburgh. We still exchange Christmas cards. She was the first teacher who said I was a good writer - and I'd never heard that before. And so I remember that, and I remember that level of loving the material and really loving writing about it. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Good
Teacher
History
" I'll watch anything, from action to art films. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Anything
Films
Art
" As long as I can remember, I've been writing - first poems, then stories, and by my early teenage years I was also in love with sailing. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Early
Long
Love
" Whaling was the oil business of its day. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Day
Whaling
Oil
" I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Relax
Bad
Culture
" After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Literature
American
Want
" To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Mind
Adventure
Person
" The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still ways to go about living. It's through Ishmael that I find a kind of overall cosmic approach to a meaningful life in this meaningless world. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Life
World
Living
" The American Revolution as it actually unfolded was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Best
Struggle
Truth
" One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Writing
Face
Past
" He was born in 1741, a descendant of the Rhode Island equivalent of royalty. The first Benedict Arnold had been one of the colony's founders, and subsequent generations had helped to establish the Arnolds as solid and respected citizens. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Born
First
Royalty
" In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Big
Planet
People
" I'm a big Stephen King fan. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Stephen King
Big
Fan
" Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Leaders
Enlightenment
Literature
" A survival tale peels away the niceties and comforts of civilization. Suddenly, all the technology and education in the world means nothing. I think all of us wonder while reading a survival tale, 'What would I have done in this situation? Would I have made it?' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Reading
Think
Technology
" I do work-related stuff on airplanes. Then, when I'm in the hotel room or just vegging out, I read for pleasure. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Hotel
Room
Just
" More than 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and only 14 miles long, Nantucket is, as Herman Melville wrote in 'Moby-Dick,' 'away off shore.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Shore
More
Miles
" A good leader has to at some point trust those around him; otherwise, nothing constructive is going to get done. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Him
Trust
Nothing
" For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Start
Book
Hardest
" XTC is my favorite band; I'm a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: 'Have you listened to such-and-such?' They're not impressed. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
You
Band
Impress