What makes a good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious. Suspicion marks the real difference between the man who wants to write honest history and the one who'd rather write a good story.

Scoops of mint ice cream with chips of chocolate cows.

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.

A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.

Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

Death is as casual and often as unexpected as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.