Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.

Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.

Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

Who you are as a person has a lot to do with who you are as meat

[A]s military history reveals, a bad plan is often better than no plan, especially if the people on the other side think it’s a good plan.

Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.

The celebration of one success launches a thousand more.

My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade.

I see the world for what it is, beyond the white and the black.

It was the desire to do the complete thing. I only took taking acting lessons because my whole thing, really, was to direct. But my first jobs were acting jobs.

I totally alienated some reporters as I retreated.

I unfortunately still crave chicken McNuggets and bacon, which is the meat candy of the world.

I'm into people's emotional lives and relationships and the complications of living. That's my turf.