I think some people who go into public life, if they go in needing the applause of thousands, they're never going to work out successfully in the end, because they don't know who they are apart from the crowds.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity.

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

When I do research, I have done - 90 percent of my time is the research, the other ten percent is the writing. So I don't have to face a blank piece of paper. I can look at this as a quote that I have from somewhere.

If you interview five people about the same incident, and you see five different points of view, it makes you know what makes history so complicated. Something doesn't just occur. It's not like a scientific event. It's a human event. So the dimensions of it will be seen differently by different people.