I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like.

I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons, including the absence of photographs, we tend to see the men and women of the Revolution as not quite real. And we have far too little sense of what they suffered.

To shut yourself from history is to shut yourself off from say music or painting or the theatre, literature for the rest of your life. It would be to cheat yourself of the pleasures of life.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

We all know the old expression, "I'll work my thoughts out on paper." There's something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes.