No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.", NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

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.

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

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

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

My wife, the star I steer by.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

I call her Google because she got everything I have been searching for.

There is no wealth but life.

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

I must have been an insufferable child; all children are.

Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much more comfortable.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

Because my movies are not successful, they are not shown. So I make a living from the budget.

So. How was your week?

The light ones may be killers, the dark ones mild; not the wrappers but the fillers, make cigars or women wild.

True prayer is asking God what He wants.