Ben Mezrich Quotes

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story.

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

I think the most important thing journalism taught me is to mine for details. The details are key. You can't try to be funny or strange or poignant; you have to let the details be funny or strange or poignant for you.

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

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

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

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.

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

There is certainly no want of journalistic ambition among the purveyors of what is now called 'long-form,' nor of novelistic technique brought to bear on nonfiction, nor of outrage.

I am an old journalist, so I always do a lot of research and dive deep into people's character, who they are, and their motivation.

Great questions make great reporting.

I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

I wanted to be a police detective. In my work, particularly in documentaries, I am obsessed with finding things out, seeking ever-new facts and perspectives - each project can involve years of research.

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

I think that a great newspaper is one that puts a real premium on digging to get the story behind the story.

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other.

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure.

A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.

What I love - and I'm a journalist - and what I love is finding hidden patterns; I love being a data detective.

I mean, journalism is very detailed... you try to get down in the weeds and sort out exactly what happened. And I don't think that a feature film is really a place where that happens.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.