David Maraniss Quotations

It's hard to know exactly how people develop the characters they do. There could be people from humble beginnings that turn into jerks. Some characteristics are just part of that special soul of that human being.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

I want my books to last, to stand the test of time, and to do that I focus on the forces that shape the subject - the cultural and sociological geography - to capture them in a way that will explain them no matter what they are doing.

My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint.

I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions, misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate our world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder.

As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.

The young Obama's lack of playing time on the high school basketball team was due more to his ability than the coach's preference for white players.

I want to write for history, not for the moment.

If you start with the mindset that you know nothing, you will learn a lot that nobody knew before.

I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead. Although you can't interview them, you have a fuller perspective on their whole life after they're gone and people are more willing to talk about them.

I said that I'm only there to write the truth, I'm not going to cover anything up, but I'll put everything in context and get as close to the truth of this person as I can.

People always try to separate the good from the bad in Clinton and say that, if he had not done certain things, he would have been a great president. But you can't do that. Those were his major characteristics.

He had his flaws, but he also had important characteristics.

I think he's emblematic of a certain type. He wasn't against the war, just didn't want anything to do with it. He wanted to get on with his life and not let the world get in the way.

That's the moment that made him a saint in Latin America. Everything he did and said before and after that is crystallized in that moment, the point where he's finally got the world stage.

War doesn't go away when the bullets stop. Vietnam still is as relevant today as it was then.

My favorites are Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, but those are a little off in terms of getting Detroit right on the head. But of course, you know, "Dancing In The Streets." You can't forget the Motor City. And we can't forget the Motor City.

It seemed that I could tell the whole story pretty powerfully in those 18 months between October of '62 and the spring of '64 when they were all at their peak. And yet you could see some of the shadows of Detroit's demise coming.

It was a time of uncommon possibility and freedom, when Detroit created wondrous and lasting things. But life can be luminescent when it is most vulnerable.

There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition - what the world gained and what a great city lost. Even then, some part of Detroit was dying, and that is where the story begins.

Well, here you had a city that was selling more cars than ever before, that had this wondrous music being created, that was so vital to the labor and civil rights of this country, and yet it was dying and didn't see it, except for some sociologist at Wayne State University who predicted that Detroit was losing population by a half-million by the end of that '60s decade, and that that trend would continue taking away its tax base.

Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missile crisis.

And all of the big shots of the car industry are there, strutting their stuff. And that year, they're feeling especially good because cars were selling more than ever before.

Well, there were several things. One was that the industry itself built in Detroit was abandoning the city - taking factories elsewhere, the corporate headquarters elsewhere.

And then the industry itself was so cocky about what they were doing that they weren't seeing what was coming on the horizon with Japan and Germany and other places that were building smaller cars.

And that John F. Kennedy uttered the first variation of "ask not what your country can do for you" in Detroit on Labor Day in 1960. So Detroit was really central to Democratic politics United States. Every Democratic candidate would start their fall campaigns in Cadillac Square.

It was so crucial to the Civil Rights Movement that on June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King came to town, walked down Woodward Avenue with more than 100,000 people and delivered the first major public iteration of his "I Have A Dream" speech, two months before he did it in Washington.

Detroit was an exaggeration of what was going on across the country. You could see the divisions, even within the Civil Rights Movement of that period. At the same time that Martin Luther King was talking about his dream, Malcolm X gave his most famous address in Detroit during that same period, "The Message To The Grass Roots," dismissing the notion of integration.

You also had in Detroit that summer, an early variation of Ferguson. A black prostitute was shot in the back by police. And all of the efforts that a very progressive police chief and mayor of that period had put into trying to restore race relations started to fall apart again, and you could see that unraveling for several years until the riots or rebellion of 1967.

Well, there is something beautiful about ruins. I mean, in one sense it's not that different from going to Rome and looking at the Forum. But it's changing. It truly is. I'm optimistic but skeptical.

Natural politicians are skilled actors, recreating reality, adjusting and ad-libbing, synthesizing the scenes, saying the same thing over and over again and making it seem that theyare saying it for the first time.

It is?classic Bill Clinton, sincere and deceptive at the same time, requiring a careful reading between the lines.

So, I mean, there's still vast swaths of the city that are suffering from a lack of jobs and poor housing and poor public schools, but they are building momentum - you know, techies, foodies, artists, musicians, all coming to Detroit. So there is this vibrancy. You see it in the newspapers every day - some story about the new Detroit.

You know, I'm too old to be an Eminem guy, but I love the back beat of that song. And he walks into the Fox Theatre and a black gospel choir is rising in song. And he turns to the camera and says...

To that extent, he will live on, at least for baby boomers and maybe longer. He's part of the culture now.

As soon as this tragedy happened in New Orleans, I just was haunted by memories and thoughts about Roberto Clemente and sort of how he gave his life to help people in a situation like this. It was very heartening for me to see athletes of this era come through in ways larger than themselves.

Sometimes heroes are born, and sometimes heroes are made. People get to show what they're made of in critical situations. You saw people demonstrate their values in this tragedy.

People evoke his name today and ask what would Lombardi have done with Terrell Owens.

Clemente, the Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero .

He told me, 'I want you to be good to my boys,' ... And I said, 'I'm going to find the truth and write the truth.' He almost got up and left.