Philbrick Quotes & Sayings

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

There was a saying on the island: "[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master. — 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

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

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

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

As long as I can remember, I've been writing - first poems, then stories, and by my early teenage years I was also in love with sailing. — 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

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

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book. — Nathaniel Philbrick

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 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

The future is like the moon. You never expect to go there, or think about what it might be like. — Rodman 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?' — 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

MASSIVES, fat heads who assume that television tells the truth" -Kevin 'Freak' from Freak's Dictionary
"Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick pg 165 — Rodman Philbrick

I never had a brian till freak came along.. — Rodman Philbrick

I wanted to make the world of 'The Last Book in the Universe' as real as possible, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I decided the world would be a very different place, but people would be pretty much the same. — Rodman 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

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

I assumed 'Freak the Mighty' was probably too weird and melodramatic to find a publisher. I certainly never expected the book to have a profound influence on my career as a writer, but indeed it has. — 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

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

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. — 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

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

It all boils down to this: A person has only two options in life, to do something or to do nothing. — Rodman 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

Sure it will hurt. But so what? Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain. — Rodman 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

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

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

Dead man has nothin' to lose, nothin' to be feared of. Now I'm back among the living and scared to death about what happens next.
- Samuel Reed — Rodman Philbrick

the greatest danger to America's future came from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism. At — 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

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

If half of the two thousand warriors fired ten arrows each during the engagement, that would have been a total of ten thousand arrows, — Nathaniel 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

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

bloc, effectively guaranteeing that — 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

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

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

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

The act of self-expression - through writing a journal or letters - often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears. — 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

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

People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing. — Nathaniel Philbrick

READING, beaming up into books" -Kevin 'Freak' from Freak's Dictionary
"Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick pg 167 — Rodman Philbrick

Odd things happen in a battle, and the human heart has strange and gruesome depths and the human brain still stranger shallows; — Nathaniel Philbrick

Good riddance to bad rubbish. — Rodman Philbrick

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

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

You ever notice how long it takes for things to happen when you know they're supposed to happen? My fake Walkman has a built-in alarm, and I set it for two in the morning and wear the headphones to bed, but before you can wake up you have to fall asleep, and I never DO fall asleep because I keep waiting for the alarm to go off. — Rodman 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

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

Keep marching boys and girls. Keep marching — Rodman Philbrick

What a goon, except it really is funny, me trying to sneeze a hot dog through my nose, and we're both laughing like total morons. — Rodman Philbrick

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

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

Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about. — Nathaniel Philbrick

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do. — Rodman 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

Whaling was the oil business of its day. — 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

I know who the real hero is, and it isn't me or brave Lanaya. It's an old man with a white beard and a walking stick and a heart so big it won't let him stop thinking he can change the world by writing down things in a book no one will ever read. — Rodman Philbrick

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

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

The day before, they had started eating the saltwater-damaged bread. The bread, which they had carefully dried in the sun, now contained all the salt of seawater but not, of course, the water. Already severely dehydrated, the men were, in effect, pouring gasoline on the fire of their thirsts - forcing their kidneys to extract additional fluid from their bodies to excrete the salt. They were beginning to suffer from a condition known as hypernatremia, in which an excessive amount of sodium can bring on convulsions. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea' has rightfully taken its place as a classic for its literary merits. It has a special place in the cannibalism canon as well. — Mitchell Zuckoff

Many of us came away from our youth thinking that the story of the Revolution was that the Americans were patriots fighting the oppressive British. It was kind of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. When you get into it, you find that it was much more complicated. — Nathaniel Philbrick

I'm a big Stephen King fan. — Nathaniel Philbrick

To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: "For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease." In chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man. — Nathaniel Philbrick

at sea, things appear different. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors. — 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

You've got a shitty habit, you know it? I've noticed it on all those TV drive-safely pitches that you do. You breathe in people's ears. You sound like a stallion in heat, Philbrick. That's a shitty habit. You also sound like you're reading off a teleprompter, even when you're not. You ought to take care of stuff like that. You might save a life. — Richard Bachman

Expel the object!" Freak shouts. "Regurgitate, you big moron!" and he gives me another thump and I cough up this yucky mess, but I'm still laughing so hard my nose is running. — 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

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

In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Shut up!" I say, holding my hands to my ears. "Shut up!"
But the stupid gummy won't shut up; he's trying to tell me something important even though I'm covering my ears and I don't want to hear it and I don't want to think about who I am or what's wrong with me or why I'm out here at the edge of the Urb, at the edge of the known world, listening to some old mope who's so crazy, he think about the future when everyone knows that the future doesn't exist. — Rodman Philbrick

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. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours — Rodman Philbrick

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history. — Nathaniel Philbrick

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