I'm one of those people that believes you should start writing before you think you're ready.

To my three sons, Peter, Scott, and Alexander who pulled me from the 18th Century and back into the present on a regular basis and therefore made me a better person, thank you. And to my wife, who sits at the table there. Who is right about almost everything.

Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.

I believe I am an honorable man.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.

Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable.