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

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" 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. "

" I really just choose stories that are compelling, have interesting trends and characters, and hopefully say something larger about society. "

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

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

" You want the story to be about something, have some deeper meaning, but there is also an emotional, almost instinctual, element, which is, does this story seize some part of you and compel you to get to the bottom of it? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story. "

" Crime stories are often sensationalized. They can provoke lower standards. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" Base stealers are often considered their own breed: reckless, egocentric, even a touch mad. "

" 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. "

" It's funny: I don't know if she babysat, but I spent time with Judy Blume when I was little. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" There's a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has. "

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

" I covered Congress, and everyone always wanted me to be a political reporter. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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