The Art of Stealing

Last year, a group of young Romanians stole millions of euros worth of art from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. They had previously only robbed homes and thought the artwork would be easy to sell. It was not. So they secreted it back home, where, in an effort to save her son, the leader’s mother burned it.

Gay Talese, who wrote for Esquire in the 1960s and currently contributes to The New Yorker, is the author of several books. His latest is A Writer's Life.

"I want to know how people did what they did. And I want to know how that compares with how I did what I did. That's my whole life. It's not really a life. It's a life of inquiry. It's a life of getting off your ass, knocking on a door, walking a few steps or a great distance to pursue a story. That's all it is: a life of boundless curiosity in which you indulge yourself and never miss an opportunity to talk to someone at length."

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