David McCullough

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.

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.

Quotes

• 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.
  • 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)

• On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in southwestern Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 Flyer.
  • The Wright Brothers (2015), Epilogue

Disputed

• Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

External links

• David McCullough at Simon & Schuster
• In Depth interview with McCullough, December 2, 2001
• David McCullough on IMDb
• Speech Transcript: "Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are" at Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on the topic, "American History and America's Future."