Quote

Roosevelt's humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure.

Every really good book was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Adventure books are my personal favorites. 'The Endurance,' a story about Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctica expedition, or 'Into Thin Air,' Jon Krakauer's personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mt Everest, are two notables.

Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.

It is one thing to hear about the forest and the river, but an entirely other experience to go there, to see the environment, and to appreciate the natural riches there first-hand.

The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.

Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.