We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desire to tell stories.

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

The political hero is not like the sports champion or matinee idol or daring inventor; like the war hero, he is born only of tragedy.

I love the magic of stories and the power of stories.

If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story.

Baseball, of course, has long been played under the burden of metaphor. More so than basketball or football, it is supposed to represent something larger than itself.

The romantic notion of the clubhouse as a traveling fraternity of working-class heroes - the boys of summer - is perhaps the most potent in all of baseball.

Barry Bonds was still young when his father's fall began. Although Bobby still continued to put up good numbers year after year, he never lived up to expectations.

Like many people, I kicked around, struggled to become a writer, finally got my first full-time job around 27, 28, at 'The Hill' newspaper. They hired me as a copy editor, which was kind of funny because I'm semi-blind because I have an eye disorder.

I was not very good at newspaper reporting. I'm just not quick enough, and I always tend to tell things as stories.

I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.

If someone told me I had to stop writing stories, that would be the end of me.

I spend my life mostly disproving conspiracies.

I wish a book could reach as many people as film, but we have to be realistic about it.

The only thing as murky as a conspiracy is what's happening in Hollywood.

I really just choose stories that are compelling, have interesting trends and characters, and hopefully say something larger about society.

Journalists are often portrayed as cynical. I often think it's the opposite.

I'm not a post-modernist. Especially when I do crime stories.

A lot of the stories I write about have an element of mystery. They're crime stories or conspiracy stories or quests. They do have built into them revelations and twists. But the revelations, to me, come from seeing history as it's unfolding, or life as it's unfolding.

There are some incredibly gifted writers in the world. You can count them on a hand. They're blessed, and they've worked at their craft, but there's very few.

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.

There's a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has.

Each person, as they live through history, can't see it all.

It took me a long time to be able to write for the 'New Yorker,' and for me, that has been the best job. I live a very conventional life, but reporting for the magazine has allowed me to do things I would never otherwise do, such as investigating a criminal conspiracy in Guatemala or trekking through the Amazon looking for a lost city.

I am not, by nature, an explorer or an adventurer.

I don't want to just traffic in sensationalism or in mere blood.

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.

I've done a lot of stories over the years, and sometimes there are larks, and they're fun, and you kind of move on.

I had always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.

I don't normally do pure historical work.

I look for stories everywhere.

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.

I often feel that with a crime story, the moral standards have to be higher. You're deal with real victims and with real consequences.

We are a country of laws. When you take that away, the consequences are enormous.

My mother doesn't need much sleep. At any hour of the night, you'd wake up, and she'd be reading. She'd read five, six books a week. When we went on sailing trips, she'd bring a suitcaseful for the week. Even then, her office would have to send more.

There are certain stories that remind you of the moral purpose that originally drew you to become a reporter.