The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

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.

The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.

Once again, I felt as I needed to flee or I’d die. That was how my life was panning out.

His being famous didn’t give him a right to use her and treat her like dirt.

After graduation in June of 1984, I moved to Manhattan. My first stop was a psychiatrist, who in less than our first fifty-minute session again diagnosed me with depression.

I have been guilty of wrong thinking.

What is the empathy deficit? The inability of people to stand in other folks shoes. It's hard to empathize with people who have different values than you

You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares how we are or what we do.

In the great scheme of things, what matters is not how long you live but why you live, what you stand for and what you are willing to die for.

Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.