David Grann Quotes & Sayings

History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset. — David Grann

Washington Bridge. The components were then lowered into the Thirtieth Street hole by a special crane that could withstand — David Grann

Stores gone, post office gone, train gone, school gone, oil gone, boys and girls gone - only thing not gone is graveyard and it git bigger. — David Grann

Fawcett once described fear as the 'motive power of all evil' which had 'excluded humanity from the Garden of Eden. — David Grann

White gave his men advice in case their cover was blown: "Keep your balance, avoid any rough stuff if possible." Making it clear that they should carry weapons, he added, "But if you have to fight to survive, do a good job. — David Grann

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, which was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He is also the author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. His work has garnered several honors for outstanding journalism, including a George Polk Award. — David Grann

Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind. — David Grann

(Brazilians called the bees "eye lickers.") — David Grann

Though it took enormous courage and virtue to risk your life in order to protect society, such selflessness also contained, at least from the vantage point of your loved ones, a hint of cruelty. — David Grann

They marched like madmen from place to place, until overcome by exhaustion and lack of strength they could no longer move from one side to the other, and they remained there, wherever this sad siren voice had summoned them, self-important, and dead. — David Grann

During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga The-the, the Killer of Flowers Moon. I will wade across the river of the blackfish, the otter, the beaver. I will climb the bank where the willow never dies. — David Grann

It was the greatest loss of life in the history of the British military, and many in the West began to portray the "savage" as European rather than as some native in the jungle. — David Grann

Many Osage, unlike other wealthy Americans, could not spend their money as they pleased because of the federally imposed system of financial guardians. — David Grann

Does God think that, because it is raining, I am not going to destroy the world? - Lope de Aguirre after going mad in the Amazon — David Grann

Though Brian was only in his late thirties, his life had been scarred by death: not only had he lost his father and brother, but his first wife had died of diabetes when she was seven months pregnant. He had since remarried, yet there were no children, and he suffered spells of what he called "wild, despairing sorrows. — David Grann

Much of the discovery of the world was based on failure rather than on success
on tactical errors and pipe dreams. — David Grann

Many accidents happen to white people because they don't believe their dreams. — David Grann

Exploration ... no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward ... — David Grann

I am getting older and am, I daresay, impatient of lost years and months," Fawcett complained to Keltie in early 1918. Later — David Grann

An Indian Affairs agent said, 'The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages? — David Grann

Starvation sounds almost unbelievable in forest country, and yet it is only too likely to happen. - Percy Harrison Fawcett — David Grann

You know, I had a lot of romantic notions about the jungle and this kind of finished that — David Grann

Years later, another member [of the Royal Geographical Society] conceded, Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men. — David Grann

Only the Indians respect the forest," Paolo said. "The white people cut it all down." Mato Grosso, he went on, was being transformed into domesticated farmland, much of it dedicated to soybeans. In Brazil alone, the Amazon has, over the last four decades, lost some two hundred and seventy thousand square miles of its original forest cover - an area bigger than France. Despite government efforts to reduce deforestation, in just five months in 2007 as much as two thousand seven hundred square miles were destroyed, a region larger than the state of Delaware. Countless — David Grann

Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his name was known throughout the world. — David Grann

Fawcett, quoting a companion, wrote that cannibalism at least provides a reasonable motive for killing a man, which is more than you can say for civilized warfare. — David Grann

Even today, the Brazilian government estimates that there are more than sixty Indian tribes that have never been contacted by outsiders. — David Grann

My experience is that when undergoing severe physical labor the mind is not at all active. One thinks of the particular problem in hand or perhaps the mind just wanders not performing coherent thought. As to missing various phases of civilized life, one has no time to miss anything save food or sleep or rest. In short one becomes little more than a rational animal. — David Grann