You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.

Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.

Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

The great thing about the arts is that you can only learn to do it by doing it.

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries... What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress.

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