Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

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

“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?'”

“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.”

“'Moby-Dick' has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment.”

“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.”

“I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.”

“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.”

“As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.”

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

“For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.”