DavidBaldacci.com

Originally published in Britain's New Statesman Magazine in 1999

Most sane people don't believe they can play basketball like Michael Jordan or wear the Yankees' pinstripes like Babe Ruth did, or paint like DaVinci or Pollock, or sing like Kathleen Battle or Celine Dione, or act like Olivier or DeNiro. However, most people, sane or mad, believe they can write, if they just had the time. The reason may be as obvious as not having to be able to jump eight feet in the air holding a ball to write, or being able to break glass with your voice. All you need is a brain. And we all have brains, although we all know people for whom such a conclusion seems questionable.

Originally published on David's Website, now included in the trade paperback edition of the novel 

Writers are mostly a nostalgic lot. We pine for the past and seem to remember everything we've ever seen, heard, loved, hated or suffered through. We drink up history, both official and those juicer pieces represented by rumor and innuendo and even bald lies. And then we knead, polish, embellish and cajole these observations, musings and hyperbole into readable prose that others are willing to plunk down cash to experience. Writers also tend to be an emotional group. We grow teary or unduly cheerful especially over events from times past as these memories take on heightened, perhaps some would say exaggerated significance, as seen through the storyteller's skewed prism. I must confess I have these "afflictions" in severe abundance. I treasure memories, both real and imagined, from my youth. I have always been fascinated by the tortured, often schizophrenic history of my native Virginia and the south in general. I spend much time exploring the lives of my parent's families. A lost uncle here, a wandering great-grandfather there, a funny story of the paternal family from the old country, a poignant tale of my maternal family's struggles in the mountains; I get the trembles each time I unearth such priceless nuggets.

Originally published in Britain's Tatler Magazine

In about five billion years the Sun, a star firmly in middle age as stars go, will transform into a red giant, a cosmic event that will radiate tremendous heat out so far into space that Mercury, Venus, and, alas, Earth too, will be utterly consumed in flames, leaving the solar system a safer, healthier, if infinitely more boring space quadrant. If nothing else, we humans are good for a few laughs. Until this final burst of nuclear fusion, rest assured that man (and woman) will continue headlong with the universal human compulsion to acquire material wealth at a pace surpassing anything Einstein ever had in that great mind of his.