Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books. — David McCullough Copy Share Image
People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons,… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
Unlike the people you see in Mathew Brady's photographs from the Civil War, the men and women of the Revolution seem more… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
The talent, including the talent for history - and I do think there are people who just have a talent for it,… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly. — David McCullough Copy Share Image
People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
You have to get inside the people you are writing about. You have to go below the surface. And that's to a… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own. — David McCullough Copy Share Image
I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read. — David McCullough Copy Share Image
When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
We still dislike hypocrites. It's a very American characteristic. We still like people who have ideas and who are willing to stand… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no uncertainties, no… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
I think it's best to pick a biographical subject who lives to a ripe old age. Older people tend to relax and… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
Housetops were covered with 'gazers'; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people ... As British officers happily reminded one… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
There are people who are trying to write history for the general reader who can be quite tedious. That said, I do… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“Steamboats by this time were becoming a familiar presence on the rivers and coastal waters of America, but not until 1838 did steam-powered ships… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted. If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“Only TR openly declared his love for the job. “Nobody ever enjoyed the presidency as I did,” he boasted, and by all evidence that… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“s ships Phoenix and Rose, in the company of three tenders, cast off their moorings at Staten Island and started up the harbor under… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“a people may let a King fall, yet still remain a people, but if a King let his people slip from him, he is… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of… — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“He worked at a plain, tall desk at which he wrote standing up or perched on a high stool,” — David McCullough Copy Share Image
“Nothing happens in isolation. Everything that happens has consequences. We” — David McCullough Copy Share Image
