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" To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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" Right whales - so named because they were 'the right whale to kill' - grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" We've got a yawl named the Phebe, which is named for a boat in a whaling journal my father and I edited. We keep a copy of the journal on board. "

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

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" 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. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does. "

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" 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. "

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" For the very young, there's nothing better than Mother Goose and anything by Dr. Seuss for the rhythms and language. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" I do work-related stuff on airplanes. Then, when I'm in the hotel room or just vegging out, I read for pleasure. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" XTC is my favorite band; I'm a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: 'Have you listened to such-and-such?' They're not impressed. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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

" 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

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" I was an English major at Brown. I never enjoyed history classes. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Instead of being a page-turner, 'Moby-Dick' is a repository of American history and culture and the essentials of Western literature. The book is so encyclopedic that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the planet Earth in the midst of the 19th century. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" I had a great AP U.S. History teacher in Pittsburgh. We still exchange Christmas cards. She was the first teacher who said I was a good writer - and I'd never heard that before. And so I remember that, and I remember that level of loving the material and really loving writing about it. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" I'm a big Stephen King fan. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Unfortunately, we have a tendency to see figures from the past as caricatures - either all good or all bad - when the truth is always much more complex. "

Nathaniel Philbrick