I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

Why is it that those who want to destroy everything good about their country are the quickest to waive the national flag?

The true business of the philosopher, though not flattering to his vanity, is merely to ascertain, arrange and condense the facts.

Trust in the person's promise who dares to refuse what they fear they cannot perform.

I always took quite seriously the things that Chuck D. of Public Enemy had to say. He's always been someone I've learned quite a bit from and someone I pay a great deal of attention to.

If we don't play God, who will?

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Feminism is the best thing to come out of the '60's.

Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

People like to put you in a little box, and that's where they are comfortable with you being.