To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.