I don't like to write history as viewed from the mountaintop. If I can't try to make what happened as real and compelling as a made-up what happened, then I don't want to write it. And if critics are bothered by it, that's fine, don't bother me. What pleases me most is when, on the one hand, somebody educated or well-read praises what I've written, and then a guy jumps out of a Brink's truck on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on a sunny morning and tells me he loves m books. I don't history ought to be reserved for the high priests of academe.

Part of the 2009 Commencement speech: There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Never was, never will be. We are all, as were those in whose footsteps we follow shaped by the influence and examples of countless other-parents, grandparents, friends, rivals. And by those who wrote the music that moves us to our souls, those whose performance on stage or on the playing field took our breaths away, those who wrote the great charters which are the bedrock of our system of self-government. And so many who, to our benefit, struggled and suffered many times of trouble and grave uncertainty. And by teachers...I want to stress as emphatically as I can the immeasurable importance of teachers.