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" You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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" 'Johnny Tremain,' Paul Revere's Ride, today's Tea Partiers - you have to tune all that out to get at the real story. "

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" As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

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" I'll watch anything, from action to art films. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" A survival tale peels away the niceties and comforts of civilization. Suddenly, all the technology and education in the world means nothing. I think all of us wonder while reading a survival tale, 'What would I have done in this situation? Would I have made it?' "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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

" 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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" 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

" Even though I hadn't read a word of it, I grew up hating 'Moby-Dick.' "

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. "

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 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

" 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

" Whaling was the oil business of its day. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" 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

" I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school. "

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

" It is impossible to say when 37-year-old Benedict Arnold first met 18-year-old Peggy Shippen, but we do know that on September 25, 1778, he wrote her a love letter - much of it an exact copy of one he'd sent to another woman six months before. But if the overheated rhetoric was recycled, Arnold's passion was genuine. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

" The American Revolution as it actually unfolded was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

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

" 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

" 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

" Nantucket's English settlers, who first disembarked on the island in 1659, had been mindful of the sea's dangers. They had hoped to earn their livelihoods not as fishermen but as farmers and shepherds on this grassy isle dotted with ponds, where no wolves preyed. "

Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" Whatever you read, there's no better place to read than the cockpit or the berth of a boat. It's kind of like being in a womb. "

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

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

Nathaniel Philbrick

" In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity. "

Nathaniel Philbrick