We find a way (in each country) to contain our differences of opinion without annihilating one another.

The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.

In the Einstein way, I can't believe in a universe that doesn't have some sort of prime mover, identical with all of created nature. I have a whole lot of a harder time with supposing the fine print of the Torah was a direct revelation.

I was conscious of being wordy as a child. I was a terrible talker. I memorised the Latin names of flowers at five; I was shown off as a freak. My father encouraged me to be wordier than I was: he'd been a street orator at the time of Mosley, and his ideal primary concert speech was Henry V's speech before Harfleur.

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.

You are not thinking hard enough if you are sleeping well. And you would have to be unhinged to take on a subject like the French Revolution, or Rembrandt, and not feel some trepidation. There is always the possibility that you will crash and burn, and the whole thing will be a horrible, vulgar, self-indulgent mess.