I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

I would pay to do what I do if I had to.

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.

I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.

I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.

When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair.

May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.

People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.

The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.

People are so helpful. People will stop what theyre doing to show you something to walk with you through a section of the town or explain how a suspension bridge really works.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.

We assume that celebrities have it easy and so love to watch them having to endure a bit of hardship.

I love Nautilus and stretching. The results are immediate, and that gives me the motivation to continue.

I am a ordinary teenager. I fall in love like everyone else.

I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

My goal is, of course, for this show to do well, and I would love it if people liked it.

I love living on that stage. Without that, I'd die.

I love my DSL, but I love my WiFi more. And I probably get on the Internet 40 percent to 50 percent more because of the combination of those technologies.

But I love New York. I used to set my alarm clock when I was there, and get up at 4am and get a coffee, just because I could.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

There is love there. And then there's times when I can't even stomach Simon. You don't have to sit next to him. That's all I have to say.