Backgrounds Quote by Gore Vidal

Covering Capitol Hill was my first assignment in political journalism, and I still think it is the best beat in Washington.

— Kasie Hunt

If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer.

— Justin Cartwright

When you write fiction, there were things about Washington that I've experienced and wanted to write about, including the swamping nature of it, the…

— Jake Tapper

I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.

— Jami Attenberg

The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I…

— Ron Chernow

I think my becoming a writer had much to do with spending a chunk of each year sitting by myself out in a tent…

— Robert Sapolsky

I was not especially a writer back in college.

— Robert Sapolsky

And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most…

— Judy Woodruff

There was a hole in Washington fiction, I felt, when I started out. Most D.C. novels were about politics or the federal city or…

— George Pelecanos

The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and…

— Ishmael Reed

Writers like Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Russell Banks, Carolyn Chute, Alice Walker, so many others that I read coming up…

— Micah Perks

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only…

— A. E. van Vogt