Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.