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" My mother doesn't need much sleep. At any hour of the night, you'd wake up, and she'd be reading. She'd read five, six books a week. When we went on sailing trips, she'd bring a suitcaseful for the week. Even then, her office would have to send more. "

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" 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. "

David Grann

Crime

Mystery

History

" I've done a lot of stories over the years, and sometimes there are larks, and they're fun, and you kind of move on. "

" I've always been a big believer that you can use the elements of storytelling to bring the reader along and to hopefully illuminate a lot of the important things. It's a challenge, but it's something I kind of believe in. "

" I have lots of gaps in my education, and so I'm often picking up classic books that most people read years ago. "

" One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book. "

" Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around. "

" It took me a long time to be able to write for the 'New Yorker,' and for me, that has been the best job. I live a very conventional life, but reporting for the magazine has allowed me to do things I would never otherwise do, such as investigating a criminal conspiracy in Guatemala or trekking through the Amazon looking for a lost city. "

" A lot of the stuff I tweet is out of childlike curiosity. "

David Grann

Childlike

Curiosity

" I often feel that with a crime story, the moral standards have to be higher. You're deal with real victims and with real consequences. "

" I'm sure every author has their own process. "

" Although baseball actually began as a game played largely by urban toughs, its image was soon reconstructed to mirror the country's pastoral myth. "

" 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. "

David Grann

Job

Copy

" Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead. "

" I'm not a post-modernist. Especially when I do crime stories. "

David Grann

Stories

Crime

" 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. "

" To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it. "

" I never want to make people upset, but sometimes we may. When I interview people, I try to make it clear that our obligation is to what we uncover and to telling that story and to presenting it fairly and making sure everyone has a say. "

" There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor. "

David Grann

Part

Always

" I don't want to just traffic in sensationalism or in mere blood. "

" 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. "

" There are certain stories that remind you of the moral purpose that originally drew you to become a reporter. "

" Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations. "

" When I work on stories, I tend to be pretty obsessive. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't normally do pure historical work. "

" I often say that the best way to find a story is a one-inch brief in a local newspaper. "

" You have to go where the truth takes you, and that doesn't always take you in exactly the same place where people you speak to might want,or suspects may want. That's your ultimate obligation. "

" Most of Gingrich's moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology. "

" Journalists are often portrayed as cynical. I often think it's the opposite. "