I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.

Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.

Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

Without confidence we feel insecure. We replay the doubting voices of our parents on a loop in our own minds.

Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.

I'm a member of the George Jones fan club, and I'm a member of U2's fan club.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

I built a series of supporters that had my back. I never abused that trust. You can't cry wolf. You have to solve most problems yourself.

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.