The notion of 'history from below' hit the history profession in England very hard around the time I came to Oxford in the early 1960s.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

I would not minimize the digital divide, which separates the computerized world from the rest, nor would I underestimate the importance of traditional books.

The American revolutionaries believed in the power of the word. But they had only word of mouth and the printing press. We have the Internet.

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

The fact that I spend a lot of time in the 18th century doesn't mean I'm not concerned with the 21st.

It's important to make clear to all the schools at Harvard the central role of the library.

My work has taken me from historical research to involvement in electronic publishing ventures to the directorship of the Harvard University Libraries.

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.

You want a wild ride, J.J.? I'll give it to you, hard and slow until you scream my name.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find we have lost the future.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated.

The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.

the truly covetous have never enough!

A lot of country pubs will receive Michelin stars.

The highest peace is the peace between opposites.