Beneath every history, another history.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.