The Transcontinental Railroad Act is the first step in creating a continental common market.

The evolution was always to greater scale and speed. Other countries did that here and there - GB in textiles, Germany in steel - but we went in that direction almost across the board.

My neck is too arthritic to snap around. The big shift in my perspective that happened in the writing process, however, was the paramount importance of the "West" epitomized by Cincinnati.

We demonstrated what you could do when a band of entrepreneurs settles an empty country with vast resources. The Chinese have a billion people and are running out of water. Tougher problem for sure.

We were suddenly getting big, with burgeoning capabilities on all sides, but very clumsy, knew we were on some kind of ride, and things changing fast, but with very little idea of what was going on.

I think it was the occasion of the final psychological break with Great Britain, in a way that had clearly not happened to that date, especially in New England and to som degree in the South.

The War of 1812 perhaps the least remembered of American wars because it was fought in such a left-handed slapdash manner on both sides.

Credit is the air that financial markets breathe, and when the air is poisoned, there's no place to hide.

No specific technology. My guess is that it was the instinct always to go to maximum scale. Great Britain kept much more of a small shop mindset well into the twentieth century, for instance.

For just a few dollars registration, you got temporary possession of a good piece of land. Live on it for five years, build a house, and farm it, and it was yours. What a brilliant economic stimulus!

You see life is predictable. What you do with your time now will dictate how your life will become tomorrow.

Don't be afraid of the dark.

It’s finding out where we came from that helps guide us to where we are going.

Your life will be rich for others only as it is rich for you.

There is a danger, if you cast someone who is 18, 19 or 20 to play 14 or 15, that very subtly, almost unconsciously, the audience is, "Oh, this isn't so bad."

I mean do women like to get the crap scared out of them at the movies? Sure. Of course.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

Dreamt I died in Chicago next weekend (heart attack in my sleep). Need to write my will today.

I can say that paintings are prayers, they have to do with anything that makes you wish for more that what everyday life provides.

Everyone wants to be perceived a certain way, to gain the things that they have decided are the things that they want in their life.