David Grann

Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around. ”

A lot of the stuff I tweet is out of childlike curiosity. ”

After a traumatic event, people tend to store a series of memories and arrange them into a meaningful narrative. They remember exactly where they were and to whom they were talking. ”

Heroes have always served as a reflection of their times, a template of who we are and what we want to be. ”

The public, the whites - not just in Oklahoma, but across the United States - were transfixed by the Osage wealth which belied images of Native Americans that could be traced back to the first brutal contact with whites. ”

I tried a few grad school programs because I didn't know how to make it... Eventually, I was desperate for a job, and there was a new newspaper opening up in Washington, D.C., called 'The Hill.' Even though my interest in politics wasn't huge, they gave me a job as a copy editor. ”

You have to go where the truth takes you, and that doesn't always take you in exactly the same place where people you speak to might want,or suspects may want. That's your ultimate obligation. ”

When criminals go free, the hope is that history will come in and provide some level of justice. It won't correct the sins, but it will at least record them. The sinners would be known, and the victims' stories would be known. ”

The Osage have this lovely phrase: 'Travelers in the Mist.' It was the term for part of an Osage clan that would take the lead whenever the tribe was venturing into unfamiliar realms. And, in a way, we are all travelers in the mist. The challenge is that, as writers, we sometimes want to ignore this murkiness, or we want to write around it. ”

I've always been a big believer that you can use the elements of storytelling to bring the reader along and to hopefully illuminate a lot of the important things. It's a challenge, but it's something I kind of believe in. ”