But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.

...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?

Blood always weighed the heaviest when it belonged to someone else.

Just because you're from a small town doesn't mean that you're small. Don't ever think anyone's more important than you are or has more valid experiences.

They did not know it was impossible, so they did it. Mark Twain

Organizing ahead of time makes the work more enjoyable.

There's something about shooting webs out of my wrists and climbing up things that just makes me happy.

The most serious film can be the most fun. The one that's supposed to be fun can be the most serious.

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.

One of the charges made against me is that I lived in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woodhull, and my present husband, Col. Blood. The fact is a fact.