When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.