Quotes from David Grann

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

I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.

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.

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.

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

I'm kind of odd; I'm a technophobe who isn't a technophobe. I'm afraid of new things, but eventually I love them. That happened with Twitter.

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.

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.

I've done a lot of stories over the years, and sometimes there are larks, and they're fun, and you kind of move on.

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.

A lot of the stories I write about have an element of mystery. They're crime stories or conspiracy stories or quests. They do have built into them revelations and twists. But the revelations, to me, come from seeing history as it's unfolding, or life as it's unfolding.

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

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

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

The giant squid is the perfect embodiment of a sea monster: it is huge, it has tentacles, it has big eyes, and it is absolutely frightening-looking. But, most important, it is real. Unlike the Loch Ness monster, we know it's out there.

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.

Although baseball actually began as a game played largely by urban toughs, its image was soon reconstructed to mirror the country's pastoral myth.

I've always been a big believer that you can use the elements of storytelling to bring the reader along and to hopefully illuminate a lot of the important things. It's a challenge, but it's something I kind of believe in.

Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around.

My night stand is more like a geological structure: a bunch of books piled on the floor with its own strata.

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.

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.

When criminals go free, the hope is that history will come in and provide some level of justice. It won't correct the sins, but it will at least record them. The sinners would be known, and the victims' stories would be known.