There are 20,000 million books I could have to read, but I can pick the ones and know that I'm learning something that I didn't know before. That's the glory of writing. It's not even so much the writing, it's what you learn - especially history - because so much of it is research.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.

When you are an historian, there's probably nothing that matters more than to be recognized by your colleagues in your own profession. I was lucky enough to win the Pulitzer Prize for History. I had to give a talk right after that to some young people. The most important thing to tell them, I think, is that you can't ever know that it's going to turn out that way.

I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.

If your ambition comes at the price of an unbalanced life, that there's nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it's not worth it.

I've chosen to be a commentator and an analyzer of politics, rather than an actual doer of it. I think it could have gone the other way, but I'm not sorry that it didn't, because this made it easier to be home with my kids and to spend time with them. Writing you can do right in your house. You don't have to go anywhere.

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream.