Laura Hillenbrand Quotes

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

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.

If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.

I am a writer and editor with a passion for true storytelling. To me, science matters, research matters and knowledge matters, whatever the field.

Nonfiction means that our stories are as true and accurate as possible. Readers expect - demand - diligence.

People often talk about parachute journalism, but one of the skills that you get when you are a correspondent is the ability to look at facts fast and work out what the story is.

Sometimes the facts can get in the way of the telling of a good story. But they don't get in the way of the truth.

I'm a reporter by nature, I want to know everything.

At least half my writing time is spent researching. So for every hour I'm actually clicking on the keyboard, I'm spending another hour trying to figure out some tiny detail I need answered.

I'm in the reporting part of journalism.

See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

I have learned as a journalist that if you look long enough and hard enough and carefully enough, most truths are discoverable.

I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.

It is easy to make stuff up - and easy to dig up information and repeat it or report it to others. But to find a real life story with real people in real life situations is quite difficult and time-consuming. Yet, the rewards are worth the effort.

You can’t report on something that you don’t know about.

It's about being right and trying to get the facts and get the story right, and inform, you know, the readership or the viewership. And there are some reporters that do that.

The thing I always tell my writing students - I'm not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I've taught writing students - what I always tell them is that the most important thing in narrative nonfiction is that you not only have to have all the research; you have to have about 100% more than you need.

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.

I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.