The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond.

Politicians wanted to mine the Grand Canyon for zinc and copper, and Theodore Roosevelt said no.

I learned more about history and literature in the used bookstores in DC than in college libraries.

Hurricane Katrina is without question the worst natural disaster in American history.

John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt.

I think Ronald Reagan is what happened....The age of Reagan brought conservatism into the mainstream....It also brought us the beginning of the new media-talk radio, the internet, cable television.

I have a lot of books I want to write.

Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.

Animals interest me more than anything else.

If you're a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you're treated as royalty. And in the United States, we're endlessly fascinated by the family.

I feel like I'm always learning from people.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

You are either in a state of perfection or a state of learning. Reading is one of the best ways to learn about our lives and purpose!

I will beg, will take to my knees, will listen to snow stroking air, a sky of gasps, will open my mouth, swallow, somewhere else the sky is falling, somewhere else it gets back up.

Long time ago when we were fab, back when income tax was all we had.

I said I would do all the films about the commercials, and the films about ball-bearings and Ford tractors and so on, if once a year they gave me money for a free film.

Regardless of whether or not you belong to a majority religion, in the United States you may not impose your theology on civil law.

The house should derive dignity from the master, not the master from the house.

She was also an adult, and when adults fight children, adults always win.

Tear off the mask. Your face is glorious