Top 45 David Grann Quotes

We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.

The romantic notion of the clubhouse as a traveling fraternity of working-class heroes – the boys of summer – is perhaps the most potent in all of baseball.

I look for stories everywhere.

The amazing thing about the sea is that it is perhaps the last truly unexplored frontier; most oceanographers estimate that only about ninety-five per cent of the sea has been studied. Meanwhile, the oceans are believed to contain more animals than exist on land, a majority of which have never been discovered.

Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.

I am not, by nature, an explorer or an adventurer.

When I work on stories, I tend to be pretty obsessive.

I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.

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.

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

I had always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.

One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels.

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

I’m sure every author has their own process.

I have lots of gaps in my education, and so I’m often picking up classic books that most people read years ago.

You have to go where the truth takes you, and that doesn’t always take you in exactly the same place where people you speak to might want,or suspects may want. That’s your ultimate obligation.

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.

The way we live history is not the way historians tell history. Our lives are messy and chaotic and bewildering.

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

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

I don’t camp; I don’t hike. I hate bugs, and I’m phobic of snakes.

You think of the rainforest as this incredibly abundant place of fauna and animals and flora. This great, rich wilderness. And yet it is such a biological battlefield in which everything is competing.

There’s a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has.

Crime stories are often sensationalized. They can provoke lower standards.

I never want to make people upset, but sometimes we may. When I interview people, I try to make it clear that our obligation is to what we uncover and to telling that story and to presenting it fairly and making sure everyone has a say.

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.

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.

Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn’t very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.

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.

A lot of the stuff I tweet is out of childlike curiosity.

Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead.

My mother doesn’t need much sleep. At any hour of the night, you’d wake up, and she’d be reading. She’d read five, six books a week. When we went on sailing trips, she’d bring a suitcaseful for the week. Even then, her office would have to send more.

Most of Gingrich’s moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology.

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.

Honestly, I had no idea what to do on Twitter when I started. I didn’t follow it enough. Slowly, though, I started to realize what I’m okay at. Like, I’m just not particularly witty.

The political hero is not like the sports champion or matinee idol or daring inventor; like the war hero, he is born only of tragedy.

To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it.

Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night.

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.

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.

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

Base stealers are often considered their own breed: reckless, egocentric, even a touch mad.

I’m a very slow reader.

There are some incredibly gifted writers in the world. You can count them on a hand. They’re blessed, and they’ve worked at their craft, but there’s very few.