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" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The way we live history is not the way historians tell history. Our lives are messy and chaotic and bewildering. "

" One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels. "

" 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. "

" The biggest difference with Twitter and writing long form is you're part of a virtual community where you know people, or think you know them, through their links. "

" 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. "

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

" We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories. "

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

" 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. "

" I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take. "

" I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table. "

" I look for stories everywhere. "

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

" 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. "

" When criminals go free, the hope is that history will come in and provide some level of justice. It won't correct the sins, but it will at least record them. The sinners would be known, and the victims' stories would be known. "

" 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? "

" Honestly, I had no idea what to do on Twitter when I started. I didn't follow it enough. Slowly, though, I started to realize what I'm okay at. Like, I'm just not particularly witty. "

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

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

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

" Like many people, I kicked around, struggled to become a writer, finally got my first full-time job around 27, 28, at 'The Hill' newspaper. They hired me as a copy editor, which was kind of funny because I'm semi-blind because I have an eye disorder. "

" Heroes have always served as a reflection of their times, a template of who we are and what we want to be. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I guess if I had to pick one interest that is unique, it would be giant squids - I'm disturbingly fascinated by them and even wrote a story about the hunt for them. "