Nick McDonell Quotes

The more I have written, the less it has been about exploring myself, and the more it has been about exploring the world around me.

I was brought up to believe you should always live the most interesting life you can.

I know that I work hard for the things that I do, and I really go to the places that I report on.

White Mike was a thinker, his teachers said. This is what he was thinking as he watched his mother's coffin being lowered into the ground.

You will not be remembered if you die now. You will be buried and mourned by a few, and what more can you ask for. But you feel so tremendously alone, because you fear that your blood is not strong or good and your friends are few and embattled too. But so what. That is the answer. So what so what so what so what so what so what so what. The world will spiral out from underneath you, and you will find nothing to hold on to because you are either too smart or too dumb to find God, and because what the fuck will Camus ever do for you? Just ideas. You are not an artist, you will not leave something behind. Maybe you are angry only because the way out is through love and you are horny and lonely. And she's dead, of course. Maybe this is the way it is for everybody, only you are weaker, or less lucky, or have seen something they all have not. You have seen that before you lies a great stretch of road, and it is windswept or blasted by the hot sun or covered in snow, or it is dirt or concrete or shrouded in darkness or bright and clear so you have to squint, but no matter what, it is utterly empty.

That was what White Mike was thinking.

He "had developed a trick in college for speaking with authority. He believed that breaking his argument into numbers forced people to pay attention. How you said something could be more important than what you said.

I'm terrified of getting what I'm not deserving of, feeling that I've got something for nothing ... at the expense of brilliant starving writers all over the world. But I have to hope these people who are helping me have integrity.

I'm an inexperienced reporter, and I'm still learning.

What do you want? Because if you don't want something, you've got nothing. You are adrift, you are washed away, and then buried under the snow and the shadows. And when, in the spring, the snow melts, no one will remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere.

I played football; I was a running back, and I took a hit, and I had a hairline fracture in my leg which no one spotted, and I was playing basketball all winter and it got worse. And then I was long jumping, about 20 feet, and I landed one time and there was this big crack, and all the bones were jutting out of my leg.

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable ... I hope I have that going forward.