Quotes by Nathaniel Philbrick - Page 2

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 / Author
Survival
Wonder
Comforts
Suddenly
Tale
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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 / Author
Metaphysical
Survival
Unknown
Facing
Literate
Manual
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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 / Author
Livelihood
Sea
Settlers
Shepherds
Dangers
Earn
Fishermen
Island
Hoped
Mindful
Wolves
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People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing.
Nathaniel Philbrick / Author
Ocean
Inspiration
Wall
Writing
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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 / Author
Historic
Actual
Battlefield
Event
Maintained
Visit
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Many of us came away from our youth thinking that the story of the Revolution was that the Americans were patriots fighting the oppressive British. It was kind of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. When you get into it, you find that it was much more complicated.
Nathaniel Philbrick / Author
Liberty
Revolution
Tyranny
Versus
Youth
Oppressive
Patriots
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Washington worked very hard to create his legacy. Even before the War of Independence was over, he was assembling his papers and making sure they were going to be in a state of preservation that would represent as best he could the official side of what occurred during the Revolution.
Nathaniel Philbrick / Author
Independence
Assembling
Legacy
Papers
Preservation
Revolution
Occurred
Official
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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 / Author
Christmas
Cards
Pittsburgh
History Good Great
Exchange
Good Writer
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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 / Author
Brown
Great American
Peers
Scared
Shy
Shy Person
Oh God
Signed
Tremendously
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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 / Author
Battle
British
Defeated
Naval
Rescue
Revolution
Surround
General
Coming
French
Washington
Ending
Fact
Fleet
Mouth
Va
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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 / Author
American History
Essentials
Literature
Midst
Planet Earth
Western
Alien
Existed
Planet
Repository
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Enthusiasm is big. When I write a book, it's a three-year commitment. Toward the end, I'm writing seven days a week, and it's exhausting but thrilling. The only hope is to have some real enthusiasm for the book. ... Above all, you need some strong emotional or personal connection to your material.
Nathaniel Philbrick / Author
Book
Real
Strong
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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 / Author
Disturbing
Guilt
Named
Early Age
Profoundly
Short Stories
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What's been largely forgotten is that Washington was highly passionate and aggressive, and it was only after losing Philadelphia to the British after a string of disastrous battlefield performances that he finally resigned himself to the more conservative approach with which he has since become associated.
Nathaniel Philbrick / Author
Aggressive
Forgotten
Philadelphia
Resigned
Associated
Battlefield
Disastrous
Largely
String
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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 / Author
Controversy
Interesting Things
Lively
Provocative
Great People Way
Great People Sometimes
Spark
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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 / Author
Another Woman
Genuine
Recycled
Rhetoric
September
Arnold
Copy
Exact
Letter
Peggy
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