“I have to throw in on a personal note that I didn’t like history when I was in high school.”

Ultimately a historian has to put together a cohesive work.

There is always more to tell.

It is important for us to remember that black people have been patriotic and have fought for that American dream in every American war.

Women have more often worked within the home, working equally as hard

If you want to have a finished product, at some point you have to say “enough.”

I would argue, but not always out there where they’re counted, not always up there in the labor unions, certainly not in leadership positions.

When we look at women, we have to look at the significance of their work in a different way from the way we look at it with men.

What first intrigued me was this desire to understand my family and put it in the context of American history.

That doesn’t mean that your curiosity is ever totally satisfied.

To believe that women’s contributions have been less important than men’s contributions because women are usually less public people.

For all kinds of reasons, it is more difficult to track women’s lives. Women’s words have simply been considered less important, so they have been preserved less often.

I didn’t study history when I was in college, none at all, and only started to do graduate study when my children were going to graduate school.

You have to decide what is extraneous and what is central.

And how those stories relate to the larger picture of American history.

I think that one of the ways that Americans will come to want to look at history is by looking at their own families’ histories

It is more difficult to research women’s lives than it is men’s.

Half my life is full of sorrow, Half of joy, still fresh and new

Don’t fear the darkness if you carry the light within.

Fortune is no real thing. But men who cannot bear what comes to them In Nature’s way, give their own characters The name of Fortune.

They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

It seemed the harmonious echo from our discordant life.

Although man is not armed by nature nor is naturally swiftest in flight, yet he has something better by far – reason.

Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.

You can’t fight a battle you don’t think exists.