President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.

Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don't suit them.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.