I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.

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.

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.

Love of learning will never let you down. You can have a quest for money, you can have a quest for power, you can have a quest for fame and they are sometimes gratifying and sometimes self-destructive. The love of learning is always gratifying and never self-destructive. The more educated, the more cultivated a society becomes, better off is everybody.

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.

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

There's no such thing as a foreseeable future.