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" 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. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Copy
Got
Journal
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" The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still ways to go about living. It's through Ishmael that I find a kind of overall cosmic approach to a meaningful life in this meaningless world. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Life
World
Living
" If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
You
Way
Us
" Maybe it's because I was named for him, but I've always wanted to meet Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's oversimplifying, but all Hawthorne's short stories and novels are, in one way or another, about guilt. Something profoundly disturbing must have happened to him at an early age. I'd like to know what that was. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Know
Meet
Short
" 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
Hotel
Room
Just
" One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Writing
Face
Past
" 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
Book
History
Space
" 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
Early
Long
Love
" For the very young, there's nothing better than Mother Goose and anything by Dr. Seuss for the rhythms and language. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Nothing
Better
Language
" I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
True
Follow
True Love
" 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. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Washington
Reality
Emotions
" More than 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and only 14 miles long, Nantucket is, as Herman Melville wrote in 'Moby-Dick,' 'away off shore.' "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Shore
More
Miles
" To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Mind
Adventure
Person
" Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Leaders
Enlightenment
Literature
" 'Johnny Tremain,' Paul Revere's Ride, today's Tea Partiers - you have to tune all that out to get at the real story. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Ride
Real
Story
" I don't subscribe to the idea that the founders or anyone else were somehow better than us and that we have to live up to their example. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Us
Idea
Example
" Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Live
Discover
Reading
" You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Cannot
You
Underestimate
" By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Local
Virtually
Whale
" 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
Big
Planet
People
" 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
You
Band
Impress
" 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
Always
Good
Past
" History is obviously dependent on the evidence, and it's always amazing to me how much evidence there is. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Always
Amazing
Evidence
" You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Home
Lose
IQ
" When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendously shy person, almost pathologically shy. The thought of peers critiquing my work - oh, God. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Creative
God
Work
" 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
Man
Future
Me
" 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
Good
Teacher
History
" In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Tragedy
Man
Meaning
" I'm a big Stephen King fan. "
Nathaniel Philbrick
Stephen King
Big
Fan
" 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
Follow
Writing
Thinking
" 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
Jungle
You
Wilderness