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" We are a country of laws. When you take that away, the consequences are enormous. "

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" 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. "

" Each person, as they live through history, can't see it all. "

" I had always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. "

Sherlock Holmes

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

" I was a schoolteacher; I taught seventh and eighth grade, and I tried to write fiction on the side. "

" I love the magic of stories and the power of stories. "

" 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. "

" 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 haven't read a word of Proust. And I listen obsessively to sports radio. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 was not very good at newspaper reporting. I'm just not quick enough, and I always tend to tell things as stories. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I spend my life mostly disproving conspiracies. "

" 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. "

" I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If someone told me I had to stop writing stories, that would be the end of me. "

" It was a very circuitous path. It was not very linear - I floundered about for many years. "

" 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 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. "

" One of the things I believe strongly in is developing institutions - legal, press, bureaucracies, academies - that are rooted in the pursuit of impartial truth. That aren't simply just bent to partisan ends or are corrupted for the powerful or for other ulterior motives. "

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

" 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. "