Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes
After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.
Quotes to Explore
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College is part of the American dream. It shouldn't be part of a financial nightmare for families.
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When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
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I'm an American citizen now, but I will always have Canadian pride.
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My dad grew up with an avocado tree in his backyard. My entire family, my wife and daughters, they love avocado. I may well be allergic. It makes me physically sick.
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Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
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African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.
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According to my parents, I just started drumming when I was two. I traveled with them from five to seven on the road, playing percussion. Between 8 and 12, my dad sort of prepared me by teaching me every aspect of road life.
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When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
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I would say I'm pretty much the exact same as the stereotypical American kid. I mean I'm really lazy, I play a lot of video games, I like girls. I like, you know, the violence and action type thing.
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An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed.
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Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it.
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I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we'd play together.
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The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music.
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My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.
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Some guy refuses to fight and we call that the sin, but he's standing up for what he believes in and that seems pretty damned American to me.
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Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.
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The Sino-American competition involves two significant realities that distinguish it from the Cold War: neither party is excessively ideological in its orientation; and both parties recognize that they really need mutual accommodation.
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I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.
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My mum and dad have always enjoyed life, and it's something that's been instilled in me. I wake up in a good mood most mornings.
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It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.
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The defining moment in American economic history is when Bill Clinton lobbied to get China into the World Trade Organization. It was the worst political and economic mistake in American history in the last 100 years.
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I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.
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I grew up playing about 15 instruments and the way that I was able to accomplish that was by cutting my classes, hanging out in the band room all day, and going from one instrument to the next to the next, until I learned how to play everything by ear.
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After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.
