I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read.

I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no uncertainties, no horsing around. It always disturbed me how many biographers never gave their subjects a chance to eat. You can tell a lot about people by how they eat, what they eat, and what kind of table manners they have.

When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.