Firsthand Account Quotes

One of these days when I'm finished coaching at Alabama, I'll write an authorized book because there's only one expert on my life, and guess who that is... me. And there won't be any misinformation. There won't be any false statements. There won't be any hearsay. There won't be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.

I have not told half of what I saw.

I've never had to spend any time in the VA hospital, so I really can't speak for those guys.

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

On the morning of September 11th, I was literally about 18 blocks from the World Trade Center. I witnessed in person what a lot of people witnessed in person, but what the world really saw on the television screen, I saw it with my own eyes that morning.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

Some writers hate to go to trials, but I love trials.

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

How can an article about me or the Batman be the true story when I am not consulted or interviewed?

The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

I can speak of slavery only so far as it came under my own observation - only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person.

Mainstream news covers war and gets everything wrong. I'd rather learn what's happening from soldiers with combat experience. It's like a former NFL player giving play-by-play. We bring the expert commentary.

If China were to explode, I'd want to be there in a flash. If there's a big story, I want to be there.

To really understand a deaf person's experience, you need someone that is deaf to be able to tell you what their experience is.

I wanted to set the story straight and really let people know what it's like and what me and my Marines went through.

I wrote about Bosnia at the time. Somebody looked out their window and saw gangsters coming down the street and doing ethnic cleansing. I said that was the thing that would happen in the future, someone phoning in what they were seeing on the scene. Whether it's the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Drudge Report or the BBC, all those reports, you have to assume there's a real person [who] has credibility.

I can read in any book and newspaper about the city of Detroit, but I want to hear what the people in Detroit have to say about Detroit. My best education is actually talking to people.

I only write about what I do, what happens to me.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

There used to be a strong belief that if you wanted to know what was really going on in a country, the best thing to do was to go there and ask a taxi driver.