People seem to forget that one reason they are now thinking differently is Freud's legacy itself.

With the passage of years, not all of Dicken's readers remained infatuated with his pathos. One generation's sublimity became another generation's kitsch.

My definition of modernism took a while to develop.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make my writing in history deeper, if that's the right word to use. And that is what I did.

There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence.

To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree.

And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.