Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of the most fulfilling pleasures of life are to be found in work - found in work you love to do, work you want to do, work that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.

The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.

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

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.

I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I will never live long enough to do the work I want to do: the books I would like to write, the ideas I would like to explore.