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We are always taking a hard look at how life was in the past in coming up with interesting subject matter for our various series, and remembering how much I used to want an encyclopedia as a kid made me realize wanting a set is very unlikely for teens today, and that conversation would be interesting.

The fondest dream of the information age is to create an archive of all knowledge. You might call it the Alexandrian fantasy, after the great library founded by Ptolemy I in 286 BC.

In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.

Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting.

I think fondly of the rabbit holes I disappeared down when I researched papers for history and English because I couldn't find quite what I was looking for, or because I had to go through so much material to find examples for my thesis.

Simplicity, for reasons that are a little bit obscure, is almost not pursued, at least in the academic world.

My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.

The obscurest epoch is today.

The thing I'm particularly interested in is natural history. In its heyday, the mid- and late-nineteenth century, when people were going out and gathering the first huge caches of data and trying to understand what was living and growing everywhere, there was such a sense of freshness to that pursuit. It's very exciting.

The New Age, I think, is a term that is well laid to rest.