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.

You think of the rainforest as this incredibly abundant place of fauna and animals and flora. This great, rich wilderness. And yet it is such a biological battlefield in which everything is competing.

The way we live history is not the way historians tell history. Our lives are messy and chaotic and bewildering.

The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.

I have lots of gaps in my education, and so I'm often picking up classic books that most people read years ago.

You want the story to be about something, have some deeper meaning, but there is also an emotional, almost instinctual, element, which is, does this story seize some part of you and compel you to get to the bottom of it?

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.

Base stealers are often considered their own breed: reckless, egocentric, even a touch mad.

To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it.

I don't hunt, I don't camp, and I get lost on my subway to work here in Times Square!

Although baseball actually began as a game played largely by urban toughs, its image was soon reconstructed to mirror the country's pastoral myth.

I guess if I had to pick one interest that is unique, it would be giant squids - I'm disturbingly fascinated by them and even wrote a story about the hunt for them.

Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night.

One of the things I believe strongly in is developing institutions - legal, press, bureaucracies, academies - that are rooted in the pursuit of impartial truth. That aren't simply just bent to partisan ends or are corrupted for the powerful or for other ulterior motives.

My night stand is more like a geological structure: a bunch of books piled on the floor with its own strata.

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

I was a schoolteacher; I taught seventh and eighth grade, and I tried to write fiction on the side.

It was a very circuitous path. It was not very linear - I floundered about for many years.

Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.

For a while, when I got out of college, I tried to write fiction. I'd grown up more around novelists, and my initial attraction was to write fiction. But I was much less suited for it. I always struggled to figure out what people were saying or doing in a particular moment.

Crime stories are often sensationalized. They can provoke lower standards.

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.

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.

I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.

I don't cry too often reading books, but I did reading Francisco Goldman's autobiographical novel, 'Say Her Name.'

I covered Congress, and everyone always wanted me to be a political reporter.

I'm a very slow reader.

Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.

I haven't read a word of Proust. And I listen obsessively to sports radio.

I often say that the best way to find a story is a one-inch brief in a local newspaper.

One of my favorite authors to read is Eric Ambler, who helped pioneer the form of realistic suspense novels.

I'm sure every author has their own process.

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

Most of Gingrich's moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology.

I never want to make people upset, but sometimes we may. When I interview people, I try to make it clear that our obligation is to what we uncover and to telling that story and to presenting it fairly and making sure everyone has a say.

In Brazil, the history of the interaction between blancos and indios - whites and Indians - often reads like an extended epitaph. Tribes were wiped out by disease and massacres; languages and songs were obliterated.

Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead.

One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book.

The biggest difference with Twitter and writing long form is you're part of a virtual community where you know people, or think you know them, through their links.

There was a part of me that always wanted to be an editor.

Honestly, I had no idea what to do on Twitter when I started. I didn't follow it enough. Slowly, though, I started to realize what I'm okay at. Like, I'm just not particularly witty.

I'm kind of odd; I'm a technophobe who isn't a technophobe. I'm afraid of new things, but eventually I love them. That happened with Twitter.

When I work on stories, I tend to be pretty obsessive.

It's funny: I don't know if she babysat, but I spent time with Judy Blume when I was little.

I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.

When I work on stories, I tend to lose sight of everything else. I forget to pay bills or to shave. I don't change my clothes as often as I should.

I don't camp; I don't hike. I hate bugs, and I'm phobic of snakes.

The giant squid is the perfect embodiment of a sea monster: it is huge, it has tentacles, it has big eyes, and it is absolutely frightening-looking. But, most important, it is real. Unlike the Loch Ness monster, we know it's out there.

Because many squid have brain nerve fibres that are hundreds of times thicker than those of humans, neuroscientists have long used them for research. These nerve fibres have led to so many breakthroughs in the study of neurons that many scientists joke that the squid should receive a Nobel Prize.

The amazing thing about the sea is that it is perhaps the last truly unexplored frontier; most oceanographers estimate that only about ninety-five per cent of the sea has been studied. Meanwhile, the oceans are believed to contain more animals than exist on land, a majority of which have never been discovered.