Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrandis an American author of books and magazine articles. Her two best-selling nonfiction books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption have sold over 10 million copies, and each was adapted for film. Her writing style is considered to differ from the New Journalism style, dropping verbal pyrotechnics in favor of a stronger focus on the story itself...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth15 May 1967
CountryUnited States of America
A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.
At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.
Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.
When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.
What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.
His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.
Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.
I spent one frenzied day interviewing producers, and ended up choosing Universal and Larger Than Life productions. It all happened in two days.
I was starstruck and completely confused; making a film of this story hadn't even occurred to me, and I hadn't written a single line of the book yet. I had no idea how this man knew anything about my book proposal.
Louie and Seabiscuit were both Californians and both on the sports pages in the 1930s. I was fascinated. When I learned about his World War II experiences, I thought, 'If this guy is still alive, I want to meet him.'
It only worked for a little while; the morning after I agreed to go with Universal, an article came out in the Hollywood trade papers, and the secret was out.
It was so demoralizing to lose my body and begin to realize that my whole future may be set on its ear. The thing that helped me was, instead of spending my life thinking about how I can get over (CFS), now I spend my life thinking about how to get around it, and how to succeed in spite of it.
The following Wednesday, I opted to go with Random House.
Most people, when they hear the disease name, it's all they know about it. It sounds so mild. When I first was sick, for the first 10 years or so, I was dismissed. I was ridiculed and told I was lazy. It was a joke.