Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.
- David McCullough Quote

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
- David McCullough Quote

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
- David McCullough Quote

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.
- David McCullough Quote

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.
- David McCullough Quote

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.
- David McCullough Quote

My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.
- David McCullough Quote

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.
- David McCullough Quote

People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.
- David McCullough Quote

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.
- David McCullough Quote

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
- David McCullough Quote

When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair.
- David McCullough Quote

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.
- David McCullough Quote