You learn history in school, and you have a reverential feeling toward it. But by being irreverent, it feels current.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you tell people you're in history, they give you this pained expression because that was the course they hated in high school. But history can be exciting, intellectually rigorous, and fun.
I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.
History provides a sense of where we've been and lessons that can be taken forward.
We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.
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.
Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.
So often, we don't realize that the very moments in which we live become our history, our story.
It's not painful to relive it. I'm comfortable with my position in American history.
A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.
When you're part of history, you don't know it. You're just sort of living your life.