I am a historian. With the exception of being a wife and mother, it is who I am. And there is nothing I take more seriously.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.

Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.

Nothing in the world can make you happy

I am never long even in the society of her I love without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

Stupid Sixteen year old kid falling from the sky! I'm late!

Preconceived notions and rules are antithetical to the creative process.

Of all the wonders that the world had to offer, only art promised immortality.