Journalist

My advice for telling someone else's story is to try not to consciously bend the story in any particular direction - to listen with an open mind, to include the good with the bad, to attempt to quell one's biases and allow the person you're writing about to emerge as wholly as possible, warts and all.

There have always been hermits: people who want to get away from other humans. Literally, some of the first extant books and poems found in Mesopotamia and China mention people living alone in the woods. It's this primal fascination that exists across all cultures and all times.

I'm always theoretically opposed to capital punishment as a matter of policy; like, I don't believe a state should put its citizens to death.

There's a difference between lying and not being straight.

The so-called modern conveniences may, in fact, be extremely inconvenient - everything seems to exist as a distraction from any sort of deeper thought or contemplation.

In an odd sort of way, the computer and the Internet is the hermit's ideal form of communication. You don't have to see anyone. To send an email, you don't have to talk to anyone. You can just send it, and they'll read it on their own. The Internet has been really good for hermits.

I committed pretty much the worst thing you can do, which is defraud the readers.

Perhaps one could say I've worked in South Africa too long, but I believe in forgiveness, especially when a person admits a mistake, asks for forgiveness, and works to right a wrong.

Frightening things happen in solitude.

I spent most of my youth in Montana, where there are long, cold winters, but Maine has the coldest winters you could imagine. Not only are they long, not only does it snow, but it gets really damp. It's a wet cold with a lot of wind.

I spent 12 years traveling more than six months a year. I really needed to see the world.

I'd lied many times: to bolster my credentials, to elicit sympathy, to make myself appear less ordinary.

I tend to be a fairly spirited person, but I've never hated anyone more than I hated Christian Longo after his trial, when I realized his guilt and that I had been partially duped.

In my writing, I try to combine all my favorite elements of journalism - accuracy, real characters that exist on this planet - with all my favorite elements of literature: a sense of flow, of propulsion, of wanting to read every sentence.

I always fancied myself an outdoorsman, even though I'm a Jewish guy from the East Coast.

Not to get too maudlin, but I think all mistakes are tests for one's mettle.

I think many people have this sense that something about modern society - the screens, the noise, the traffic, the constant busyness - has approached a point where living in the world feels somewhat unhealthy.

My fight-or-flight mechanism... had served me well in Gaza, in Afghanistan, and all the places I'd been.

I am guaranteeing you that if you see my byline on a story, it's going to be the cleanest story you've ever read.

Modern life, especially with young children, so often seems like a mad rush... We so rarely take time to just do nothing - not look at our phones, not read the news.