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David McCullough
Two Pulitzer Prizes for Biography
It wasn't that I was rebelling against the imprisonment of a vocation that wasn't for me. I liked the people I worked with. I went in every day very eager to do whatever we had to do. I was an editor then at American Heritage Publishing Company, but I had an idea for a book, and I began working on it at nights, and on weekends, and on vacations, and it took me three years. And when that book was published it had a reception -- both critically and publicly, with the reading public -- that was far beyond what I had expected. And at that point, I decided that I would cut loose and try it on my own. And, because I had a wonderful partner, editor-in-chief, wife, who was equally willing to take that risk -- biggest risk we ever took. I did it. Had I not had someone in my life who was as willing as I was to take the step, I might not have done it.
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Scott Momaday
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Scott Momaday: Fix your sight upon something and then go after it, and try not to be deflected. You have something that most of us don't have and that is time. You have time in which to deliberate, time in which to reflect, time in which to determine who you are. Use it. Don't panic. A lot of kids tend to panic, but I say just take it easy. But go for something. Move positively towards some goal that you would like to achieve. Always think, ask yourself how you would like to be known. Don't let yourself be determined by others. And this is especially true where young people are concerned, because everybody wants to determine them. And they have very few defenses against that. So I say, for God's sake, you know, don't let other people tell you who you are. If I had let people tell me who I was, I would have dropped back there somewhere. Determine who you are, and don't let anybody else do it for you. That's the best advice I can give a young person.
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Greg Mortenson
Best-Selling Author, Three Cups of Tea
Greg Mortenson: After we were on K2 for about ten weeks, everybody else had left. I was just there with three other climbers, and I really wanted to get to the top. I pushed myself way beyond the physical and emotional limits. And it wouldn't make sense at that point to really keep on trying to get to the top. It's kind of like going on a 400-mile journey with 200 miles (worth) of gas. Going up to the top at the beginning, it was almost as if I felt my sister there. And I also visualized -- I really believe in visualization when you set your goals -- so I visualized putting that amber necklace on the top. But I also, as it got more and more difficult, I started thinking. I kept wondering, "How much is this going to take?" And at one point before I started to turn down, I even thought, "I can probably get to the top. I may die, but that's okay, because I'll make my goal." And then when I came down from that -- you kind of go up and down -- when I realized I had been so focused on getting to the top, I really hadn't focused on the bigger goal, that Christa certainly wouldn't want me to die just to climb a mountain in her honor. It was on September 3rd actually. I remember this very vividly. I was carrying some rope up the mountain. And I was up, I was pretty high. And I suddenly realized, I really need to go down, and it's okay to go down. But I felt in my mind as if I'd failed. And I had to come to terms with that.
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