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" The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind. "
David McCullough
Mind
Work Hard
Work
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" With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that. "
David McCullough
Finding
Follow
Look
" To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. "
David McCullough
Art
Way
Music
" I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist. "
David McCullough
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" I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene. "
David McCullough
Way
Dickens
He
" In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know. "
David McCullough
You
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Time
" I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals. "
David McCullough
Think
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" My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America. "
David McCullough
War
Focus
America
" The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor? "
David McCullough
Human Nature
Luck
Nature
" To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life. "
David McCullough
Life
Back
College
" My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader. "
David McCullough
Book
Kind
Interesting
" I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. "
David McCullough
Hard
Work
Mean
" People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works. "
David McCullough
Stop
Doing
You
" Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project. "
David McCullough
Journey
Book
Never
" I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. "
David McCullough
Writing
Hard
Out
" I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research. "
David McCullough
Never
Find
Writing
" Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love. "
David McCullough
Love
Finding
Real
" First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. "
David McCullough
Lived
Argument
You
" I would pay to do what I do if I had to. "
David McCullough
Had
Pay
Would
" When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair. "
David McCullough
Me
Philadelphia
Long
" History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. "
David McCullough
Who
Guide
History
" You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history. "
David McCullough
Know
History
Democracy
" A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia. "
David McCullough
Than
Past
Nation
" No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read. "
David McCullough
History
Read
Someone
" I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities. "
David McCullough
Lucky
Education
Stars
" When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. "
David McCullough
Thought
Research
Way
" I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. "
David McCullough
Today
Life
Good
" May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof. "
David McCullough
Honest
May
Men