Jon Krakauer Quotes

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

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

Some writers research in order to write. I write in order to research topics that interest me. Especially if I can meet with other people, in forums from illness support groups to phone-sex hotlines, and learn what other people know best.

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 think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched.

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!

That's how I prepare for anything - I read whatever I can get my hands on, talk to people. I'm a bit of a nerd like that.

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

You do as much research as you can for any project.

I get really into research. I know people say that, but I'm really into research.

Every writer should be able to write anything if you do the research and you're sensitive enough to ask the questions.

I read round the subject, I make a skeleton outline, and then I start work in the relevant archives. During the marshaling of the material, I copy the material from each archive file across to the relevant chapter in the skeleton outline.

The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding.

There's the wonder of being able to do research from your own living room, of course. I do find that my biggest research issue, though, is how to frame my questions.

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.

I frequently have scenes that take place in places I've never been or characters who have professions that I know nothing about that I've got to research. But that's what Google is for.

Once I engage in something, I really engage in it, and I love the process of reading and researching because I come from an academic background.

Being one of my sources is exhausting. It's not one interview and you're done. I keep going back until I feel like I understand everything.

Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.

The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.

When I'm sniffing around new territory, I often choose, rather randomly, one general book and then follow its bibliography and notes to other, more specialized works and to the primary source material.

My work is very carefully researched. Sometimes I have to ditch an idea because I can't prove it.

I used to be something of an obsessive when it came to research. When I first began writing the Thorne novels, I would drive to a set of traffic lights in the early hours of the morning to make sure you could turn left. I thought it was important to get even the most trivial details right.

I'm big on research.