About Nathaniel Philbrick: Nathaniel Philbrick is an American author and a member of the Philbrick literary family. He won the year 2000 National Book Award for his maritime history, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.
I'll watch anything, from action to art films.
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 ...
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.
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.
To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes.
You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare.
Even though I hadn't read a word of it, I grew up hating 'Moby-Dick.'
For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.
I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture.
Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does.
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 ...
'Moby-Dick' has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment.
Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live.
I'm a big Stephen King fan.
In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.
Whaling was the oil business of its day.
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 thou...
You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.
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.
As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.
