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" In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Tragedy
Man
Meaning
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" 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
" 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
" Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Live
Discover
Reading
" By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Local
Virtually
Whale
" For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Start
Book
Hardest
" I'm not one of these people who want to tear down our heroes and that kind of thing. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
People
Who
Want
" To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Mind
Adventure
Person
" The irony is that Washington was, in reality, very much like Benedict Arnold. The big difference was that Washington was ultimately able to control his emotions, something Arnold never learned to do. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Washington
Reality
Emotions
" 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
" 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 follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
True
Follow
True Love
" I'll watch anything, from action to art films. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Anything
Films
Art
" 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
" 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
" Nantucket was a Quaker-based culture, so they were not readers. There's a great Nantucket-based novel from the 19th century that Melville read for his research for 'Moby-Dick': 'Miriam Coffin' by Joseph Hart. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Culture
Great
Research
" As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Narrative
Read
History
" We think of the revolution ending in Yorktown, Va. The fact of the matter is that the French defeated the British in a naval battle right in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Because the British fleet was coming to rescue Cornwallis, the British general, Washington was able to surround Cornwallis. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Revolution
Mouth
Ending
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Writing can't be too calculated. My best writing is when I set it aside, move on. It's not when I'm crafting a sentence, thinking about what word should follow another. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Follow
Writing
Thinking
" You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Cannot
You
Underestimate
" I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
High School
School
High
" 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
" Most Americans have no clue that before there were highways, there were only waterways to get through the wilderness. If you weren't on a lake or a river, you were in a jungle. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Jungle
You
Wilderness
" Even though I hadn't read a word of it, I grew up hating 'Moby-Dick.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Word
Up
Though
" 'Johnny Tremain,' Paul Revere's Ride, today's Tea Partiers - you have to tune all that out to get at the real story. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Ride
Real
Story
" 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
" 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