I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself.

Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues.

I do think we're on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don't know how to talk about it.

Although the United States lost a quarter of a million men and women, civilians and soldiers, in World War II, that's considerably less than the Russians lost in soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad alone. It's important to convey to countries and to people and to generations who have no experience of the 20th century as it was lived in Europe just how catastrophic it was.