David McCullough

“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

“Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.”

“The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education. Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a mem...”

“A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.”

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

“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...”

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

“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...”

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

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

“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

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

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

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

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

“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 pl...”

“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 reade...”

“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.”

“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?”

“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 satisfac...”