Aaron Swartz Quotes

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 spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are, and to look where things have gone missing.

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.

When I really want to learn about something, I write a book on it. Then the real research begins, as I begin to hear people's stories, and huge amounts of information begins to comes straight to my doorstep. Then I can write an even better book the next time!

Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.

I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.

I really enjoy researching, and for almost every piece, I research enough to write a book.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing your nose deeper into the sewer of facts.

One thing I can say right off the bat is that creating great editorial is a huge challenge, and you can't help but go through the process and not appreciate how valuable this skill is, and how much I admire the people who do this every day.

A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right. If you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.

I did not end up as broadly educated as my Cambridge colleagues, but I graduated probably better equipped to write a book on my chosen subject.

I was not very good at newspaper reporting. I'm just not quick enough, and I always tend to tell things as stories.

I think some people think that writers read and read and read, get the information, and then write. That's not how it works. Often, you write yourself into a dark place where you don't know what you need to know, so you go get the information.

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.

I have always found writing very difficult.

The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about.

I think I'm a terrible researcher. I find it very boring and frustrating, but the things you can find are better than what I could imagine. And when you find them, it's wonderful, and they don't feel artificial.

The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word - let alone your learning to write English - is, in short, impossible.

For me, writing in English is not an easy task.

I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything.