History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

What's it really like to always be the prettiest person in a room? Dos it mean you're always acting as if in a play, because no one stops looking at you?''Life is a play, isn't it?

It feels good to read book. But it is grander to write a book.

No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.

If nothing is at risk, nothing is established.

When you sing live, you cannot expect any artist, except for the amazing Beyonce or GaGa, to get it right every time.

So you don't have time for concealer, you have time for powder for when you start crying later about how some boy doesn't like you.

My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.

Advice is very easy to give, and even easier not to follow, so I don't fool with it.

The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.

I'm a wuss - a complete wuss!