Philbrick Quotes

I think in some way it's like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We're all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows. ~ Rodman Philbrick

I've always known that I had the happy facility of making enemies of any one I ever knew, ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

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

I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn't cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground. ~ Rodman Philbrick

yield. In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. "The women now went willingly into the field," Bradford wrote, "and took their little ones with them to set corn." The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

After I had written more than a dozen adult genre novels, an editor I knew in New York asked me to write a mystery for young adults. ~ Rodman Philbrick

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

To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I wrote Freak the Mighty because Max, the mighty half of Freak the Mighty, insisted and he's bigger than I am. ~ Rodman Philbrick

a space of time is a great breeder of myths. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I'm thinking maybe letting the latches burn is the right idea. Let everything burn until there's nothing left but ashes and cool rain. ~ Rodman Philbrick

The whaleman's rule of thumb was that, before diving, a whale blew once for each minute it would spend underwater. Whalemen also knew that while underwater the whale continued at the same speed and in the same direction as it had been traveling before the dive. Thus, an experienced whaleman could calculate with remarkable precision where a submerged whale was likely to reappear. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I'm doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I'll see a new way into the material. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

He's a feral child. No mother, no father, no one to care for him or raise him or teach him how to be human. So he's existed much like an animal, without language. He thinks in images, not word."
"How strange," Lanaya, sounding amazed.
Ryter shakes his head sadly. "Not strange, I'm afaraid. His condition is all too common in the latches. And becoming more common every day. ~ Rodman Philbrick

. . . to voice private sympathies in the context of an official proceeding would require Washington to become, in his own words, 'lost to my own character.' Here, in this reference to character, Washington hit upon the essential difference between himself and Arnold. Washington's sense of right and wrong existed outside the impulsive demands of his own self-interest. Rules mattered to Washington. Even though Congress had made his life miserable for the last four years, he had found ways to do what he considered best for his army and his country without challenging the supremacy of civil authority. To do otherwise, to declare himself, like the seventeenth-century English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, master of his army and his country, would require him to become 'lost to my own character.' For Arnold, on the other hand, rules were made to be broken. He had done it as a pre-Revolutionary merchant and he had done it as military governor of Philadelphia. This did not make Arnold unusual. Many prominent Americans before and since have lived in the gray area between selfishness and altruism. What made Arnold unique was the god-like inviolability he attached to his actions. He had immense respect for a man like Washington, but Arnold was, in the end, the leading person-age in the drama that was his life. Not lost to his own character, but lost in it, Arnold did whatever Arnold wanted. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Remembering is just an invention of the mind ... It means that if you want to, you can remember anything, whether it happened or not ... You don't need a time machine if you can remember. ~ Rodman Philbrick

In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Whatever you read, there's no better place to read than the cockpit or the berth of a boat. It's kind of like being in a womb. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

We interact with one another as individuals responding to a complex haze of factors: professional responsibilities, personal likes and dislikes, ambition, jealousy, self-interest, and, in at least some instances, genuine altruism. Living in the here and now, we are awash with sensations of the present, memories of the past, and expectations and fears for the future. Our actions are not determined by any one cause; they are the fulfillment of who we are at that particular moment. After that moment passes, we continue to evolve, to change, and our memories of that moment inevitably change with us as we live with the consequences of our past actions, consequences we were unaware of at the time. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Warren had a most unusual household. A recent widower with four children between the ages of two and eight, he was not only a leading patriot but also had one of the busiest medical practices in Boston. He had two apprentices living with him on Hanover Street, and he sometimes saw as many as twenty patients a day. His practice ran the gamut, from little boys with broken bones, like John Quincy Adams, to prostitutes on aptly named Damnation Alley, ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Every word is part of a picture, Every sentence is a picture. All you have to do is link them together. ~ Rodman Philbrick

I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater. ~ Rodman Philbrick

There is no greater compliment for a writer than to have pleased a troubled child. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of everything, even pain. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Hope was all that stood between them and death. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

In the end, both sides wanted what the Pilgrims had been looking for in 1620: a place unfettered by obligations to others. But from the moment Massasoit decided to become the Pilgrims' ally, New England belonged to no single group. For peace and for survival, others must be accommodated. The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors - and all of the compromise, frustration, and delay that inevitably entailed - they risked losing everything. It was a lesson that Bradford and Massasoit had learned over the course of more than three long decades. That it could be so quickly forgotten by their children remains a lesson for us today. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Chase's ability to adjust his manner of leadership to the needs of his men begs comparison to one of the greatest and most revered leaders of all time, Sir Ernest Shackleton. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

It's fun to be amazing, to be the star of the show, to have everyone watching you - even if you have to act like a pig. ~ Rodman Philbrick

I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.' ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie. ~ Rodman Philbrick

The sperm whales' network of female-based family unit resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I am an avid fisherman, and my daily schedule is to write in the morning and then go fishing in the afternoon. In Maine, I fish mostly for stripers, and in the Florida Keys, I go after all kinds of game fish. ~ Rodman Philbrick

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. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life. ~ Rodman Philbrick

As a kid, books were my great escape and my salvation. ~ Rodman Philbrick

To write timelessly about the here and now, a writer must approach the present indirectly. The story has to be about more than it at first seems. Shakespeare used the historical sources of his plays as a scaffolding on which to construct detailed portraits of his own age. The interstices between the secondhand historical plots and Shakespeare's startlingly original insights into Elizabethan England are what allow his work to speak to us today. Reading Shakespeare, we know what it is like, in any age, to be alive. So it is with Moby-Dick, a novel about a whaling voyage to the Pacific that is also about America racing hell-bent toward the Civil War and so much more. Contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America: all the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1775 as well as a civil war in 1861 and continue to drive this country's ever-contentious march into the future. This means that whenever a new crisis grips this country, Moby-Dick becomes newly important. It is why subsequent generations have seen Ahab as Hitler during World War II or as a profit-crazed deep-drilling oil company in 2010 or as a power-crazed Middle Eastern dictator in 2011. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

No matter how much the inhabitants might try to hide it, there was a savagery about this island, a bloodlust and pride that bound every mother, father, and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I had not then learned the philosophy which teaches that he who would attempt enterprises of great command, must begin his government by laying its foundations in his own breast, in control of his own passions & that he who would survey the world must first sound the depth & shallows of his own character. ~ William Reynolds

Soon after, Tom, all of twenty years old, became the only soldier in the Civil War to win two Medals of Honor. In ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Even though I hadn't read a word of it, I grew up hating 'Moby-Dick.' ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Nickerson began to understand, as only an adolescent on the verge of adulthood can understand, that the carefree days of childhood were gone forever: "Then it was that I, for the first time, realized that I was alone upon a wide and an unfeeling world . . . without one relative or friend to bestow one kind word upon me. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

freak the mighty is the best book I ever read so I recommend it to anyone who likes good books that have different feellings and emotions ~ Rodman Philbrick

We all know the story: how a defiant and undisciplined collection of citizen soldiers banded together to defeat the mightiest army on earth. But as those who lived through the nearly decadelong saga of the American Revolution were well aware, that was not how it actually happened. The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to remember how after boldly declaring their independence they had so quickly lost their way; how patriotic zeal had lapsed into cynicism and self-interest; and how, just when all seemed lost, a traitor had saved them from themselves. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Keep marching boys and girls. Keep marching ~ Rodman Philbrick

For all they had suffered during those first terrible winters in America, their best years were behind them, in Leiden. Never again would they know the same rapturous sense of divine fellowship that had first launched them on this quest. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

...her hull might be compared to a fat man on the short end of a lopsided seesaw ~ Philbrick, Nathaniel

I have vivid memories of junior high school. I didn't quite know how to deal with kids and make friends and all of that. If you talked to people who knew me at the time, they'd think I was a popular kid in school. But boy, I didn't feel that. ~ Rodman Philbrick

For the last week or so it's like getting jabbed with a little needle every time I hear that word. Gram is trying to pretend how excited she is I'm finally in the eighth grade, like this is a really big deal. Which is a joke, because the only reason I got passed from seventh grade is because they figured this way the big butthead can be - quote - someone else's problem, thank God, we've had quite enough of Maxwell Kane - unquote. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Books are like truth serum
if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

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

As a writer, I'm convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvelous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone. ~ Rodman Philbrick

I'll watch anything, from action to art films. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I was never forced to write. At least, I was never forced or even encouraged to write fiction. Creative writing wasn't in the curriculum at my school when I was in sixth grade. ~ Rodman Philbrick

It was not as if the rest of the nation was suffering from want. .. Americans were experiencing a war-related economic boom. these same citizens might be enjoying an unusual level of prosperity, but they were not aboutto share it with their struggling national government and their even more beleaguered army. Without an ability to raise its own taxes, the Continental Congress had been printing its own money to pay for the war. But after five years of churning out bills that had become almost worthless, Congress was left with few options. By the spring of 1780 every thing was beginning to grind to a terrible and tragic halt. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Brown made a claim that possibly hit a little too close to home. 'Money is this man's god,' the handbill read, 'and to get enough of it, he would sacrifice his country. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I used to belong to a family unit, with a foster mom and dad and my little sister, Bean, but that's over and I don't want to talk about what happened , or how unfair it was. Not yet. The less said about that the better, because if there's one thing I learned from Ryter it's that you can't always be looking backward or something will hit you from the front. ~ Rodman Philbrick

You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Paul Revere Jr., with whom I had lunch at Spanky's Clam Shack in Hyannis, Massachusetts. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Faint heart never won fair lady," he wrote; "neither did it ever pursue and overtake an Indian village. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

A Puritan believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

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

I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids. ~ Rodman Philbrick

You can't mess around with young readers - you have to cut straight to the heart of the story. The character can be complex, the plot can have some surprises, but the emotions have to be clear. ~ Rodman Philbrick

Bean finds the best apple in our tree and hands it up to me. "You know what this tastes like when you first bite into it?" she asks.
"No, what?"
"Blue sky."
"You're zoomed."
"You ever eat blue sky?"
"No," I admit.
"Try it sometime," she says. "It's apple-flavored. ~ Rodman Philbrick

After seventeen days, one of the crew suggested that they cast lots. As it turned out, the lot fell to the man who had originally made the proposal, and after lots were cast again to see who should execute him, he was killed and eaten. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style. ~ Rodman Philbrick

XTC is my favorite band; I'm a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: 'Have you listened to such-and-such?' They're not impressed. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

at sea, things appear different. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

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

Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust;
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.

William Bradford
Plymouth Colony Governor ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

You can take him, right?" he asks a couple minutes later.
I go, "Are you kidding? You can't just fight Blade, you have to fight his gang, too."
"You mean you couldn't take him and I was giving him lip? ~ Rodman Philbrick

As Herman Melville wrote of that seagoing monster of a man Captain Ahab, "All mortal greatness is but disease. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

The only real treasure is in your head. Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you ~ Rodman Philbrick

Writing can't be too calculated. My best writing is when I set it aside, move on. It's not when I'm crafting a sentence, thinking about what word should follow another. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced. ~ Rodman Philbrick

It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God's created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar! ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

This mortal life decays apace How soon the bubble's broke Adam and all his numerous race Are Vanity and Smoke. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Melville's example demonstrates the wisdom of waiting to read the classics. Coming to a great book on your own after having accumulated essential life experience can make all the difference. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Without the discovery of Arnold's treason in the fall of 1780, the american people might never have been forced to realize that the real threat to their liberties came not from without but from within. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

During World War II, the University of Minnesota's Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene conducted what scientists and relief workers still regard today as a benchmark study of starvation. Partly funded by religious groups, including the Society of Friends, the study was intended to help the Allies cope with released concentration-camp internees, prisoners of war, and refugees. The participants were all conscientious objectors who volunteered to lose 25 percent of their body weight over six months. The experiment was supervised by Dr. Ancel Keys (for whom the K-ration was named). The volunteers lived a spare but comfortable existence at a stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

There are two possible responses to a world suddenly gripped by terror and contention. There is the Moseley way: get mad and get even. But as the course of King Philip's War proved, unbridled arrogance and fear only feed the flames of violence. Then there is the (Benjamin) Church way. Instead of killing him, try to bring him around to your way of thinking. First and foremost, treat him like a human being. For Church, success in war was about coercion rather than slaughter, and in this he anticipated the welcoming, transformative beast that eventually became, once the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were in place, the United States. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as "American" characteristics. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

Thomas Paine was so inspired by the heroism displayed at Fort Mifflin that he published an open letter to William Howe: 'You are fighting for what you can never obtain and we are defending what we never mean to part with. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for awhile, and that's the truth, the whole truth. The unvanquished truth, is how Freak would say it, and for a long time it was him who did the talking. ~ Rodman Philbrick

His heart was simply to big for his body. ~ Rodman Philbrick

You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

You don't need a time machine if you know how to remember. ~ Rodman Philbrick

BOOK, a four-letter word for truth serum" -Kevin 'Freak' from Freak's Dictionary
"Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick pg 161 ~ Rodman Philbrick

They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants - the types of people who had founded Jamestown in Virginia - these were, for the most part, families - men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship as they pleased. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

In his opinion, humans were best when miserable, and so he had worked at being miserable his whole life, and in his generous way tried to make as many people miserable as possible. ~ Rodman Philbrick