"Novelists talk about their characters starting to do things they didn’t expect them to. Well, I imagine every writer of biography or history, as well as fiction, has the experience of suddenly seeing a few pieces of the puzzle fit together. The chances of finding a new piece are fairly remote — though I’ve never written a book where I didn’t find something new — but it’s more likely you see something that’s been around a long time that others haven’t seen. Sometimes it derives from your own nature, your own interests. More often, it’s just that nobody bothered to look closely enough."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesPresidential Medal of Freedom recipientsBiographers from the United States
Original Language: English
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As quoted in "David McCullough, The Art of Biography No. 2" by Elizabeth Gaffney & Benjamin Ryder Howe, in The Paris Review, Issue 152 (Fall 1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_McCullough
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David McCullough
David Gaub McCullough (7 July 1933 – 7 August 2022) was an American author, narrator, popular historian, and lecturer. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' highest civilian awards.
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