David McCullough Quotes
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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.
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You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
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I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.
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I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.
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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.
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I would pay to do what I do if I had to.
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I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
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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.
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History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
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When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.
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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.
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There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.
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I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.
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No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.
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I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
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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.
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I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.
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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.
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First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
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May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.