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
In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.
To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes.
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.
As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
Whaling was the oil business of its day.
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?'
You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.
As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.
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.
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.
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.
