The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.

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.

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

A president who has incited violence inspires citizens towards hate and violence.

I am who Iam, I enjoy life in my own way and that is hell of a lot more than most people can say for themselves

One does not set out with the idea that I've just had a great idea and now I'm going to go and carry it out. Almost all art that's made like that doesn't go anywhere.

The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.

You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal.

The problem a guy who lies all the time faces is he never can tell when anybody else is telling the truth.

Fasting is truly a secret source of power.

You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

Somehow I am really relaxed within the chaos of having a baby - and anyone who's a mother knows it's very hard to relax, because there is so much to do and worry about!

I do think fame can distort reality. I've always felt that.