It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us."

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".