“The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it’s true.”

In terms of a narrative nonfiction book, when you’re describing scenes that you have multiple sources for, and that you have differing sources for, and you decide to choose a path that puts all that information together.

I have an antique console stand-up radio that I bought in a yard sale, that I’ve always half-believed has magical properties. It’s in my office, and it has watched over each of the fifteen books I’ve written. It also helped me find my wife.

Rumor gets printed as fact. We may have lost our critical facility as a nation.

I certainly was a geeky kid myself, but to me, math and science were always these magical things- powerful tools you could use in incredible ways.

I’ve always loved adventure stories that involve brilliant kids using their brains to beat systems that seem unbeatable.

I write about nerds who go the extra mile and become rock stars.

There’s always going to be controversy when you write the way I write.

Businesses should follow and learn from others successes and failures in order to better understand and predict their own.

Well yeah, there’s definitely going to be a little bit of the author in that. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

People rely on Wikipedia, and a lot of it is wrong. But because there it is on the Internet, they assume it’s right.

I believe Facebook is going all the way. They’re going to reach a billion members and will be the biggest company in the world. It will be a platform everyone goes on the Internet through.

I see myself as an entertainer.

I write nonfiction in this thriller-esque style. I have all the facts; I research it. I have thousands of pages of court documents… I try to get inside my stories.

I write because I can’t sleep.

Seeing someone reading something I wrote on an airplane – things like that are pretty awesome.

Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.

You have to be a really talented writer if you’re trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don’t have the focus to do that, really.

Notice that the whole story of Eden is the story of the struggle over a woman’s relationship to a psychoactive plant.

Those two volleys really could be the story of this match summed up at the end of it.

I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].

Although I’m up for working in any genre, I do love the passion and dynamic storytelling that horror stories can provide. Dealing with big questions and possibilities of all sorts of stories with life and death consequences is enthralling and exhilarating to me.