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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" History is obviously dependent on the evidence, and it's always amazing to me how much evidence there is. "

" 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. "

" There's an ugly civil war side to revolutionary Boston that we don't often talk about and a lot of thuggish, vigilante behavior by groups like the Sons of Liberty. "

" I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school. "

" I'm a big Stephen King fan. "

" Whaling was the oil business of its day. "

" 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

Writing

Thinking

" 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

Miles

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is. "

" I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.' "

Nathaniel Philbrick

True

True Love

" As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books. "

" I'm not one of these people who want to tear down our heroes and that kind of thing. "

" 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. "

" Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature. "

" 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. "

" For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book. "

" 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. "

" In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "

" You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

Home

Lose

" As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history. "

" Maybe it's because I was named for him, but I've always wanted to meet Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's oversimplifying, but all Hawthorne's short stories and novels are, in one way or another, about guilt. Something profoundly disturbing must have happened to him at an early age. I'd like to know what that was. "

" By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population. "

" For me, 'Moby-Dick' is more than the greatest American novel ever written; it is a metaphysical survival manual - the best guidebook there is for a literate man or woman facing an impenetrable unknown: the future of civilization in this storm-tossed 21st century. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

Man

Future