The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

I cannot help, but when danger is at hand remember always that I am here to stand -- or fall -- with you.

After half an hour the drug hit me like a sensuous tidal wave. I turned into a tactile temptress and wanted to stroke the whole world. It gave me untold confidence.

Football lost its excitement for me.

The last couple relationships I had were long distance. It's not like I can make much of an effort to travel and see anybody. The guy had to do all the work, unfortunately.

If you don’t use your voice, there’s someone waiting behind you who will.

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind.

Luckily, I've never been offered a directing job that was lucrative. I've never heard, "Here's $800,000 to remake Sisters."

I had always been kind of obsessed with making a home of my own and was always drawing rooms that I wanted to live in, down to pictures on the wall and the faces that would be in the photographs.

The computer provides the only way to give students a real foundation in 21st-century skills.

You know flexibility is a good thing but it shouldn't - you shouldn't be flexible on core principles.