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When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.

The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning.

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

I think all of the secrets of the universe are revealed in history. We understand who we are by understanding where we've been and why we are the way we are, and where we come from.

What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.