All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

Our liberal, New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior, to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much.

I did a book in 1996, an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.

This is what I would have done if I had to have a real job: I would have been a history teacher.

Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

My argument is that War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor reading.

I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God.