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History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.

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

Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

So often, we don't realize that the very moments in which we live become our history, our story.

When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will.