You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture.
You've got to become them."
(Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?