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

Ultimately a historian has to put together a cohesive work.

There is always more to tell.

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.

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

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.

We know we can’t be spiritually transformed by just focusing on the will.

I personally am not a team player in that manner.

That’s the illusion – the idea that you can be all right on the inside and not act it out – and it has affected us in many ways. That’s a part of the idea that professing is enough.

Probably I’m more of a fan of the literary references than the pop-culture references. But I do go to the pop-culture well quite frequently because people, I think, are sort of inherently ready to laugh at that. It’s a free laugh almost. Usually, everybody gets it.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

Such words as ‘God’ and ‘Death’ and ‘Suffering’ and ‘Eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

A great nose may be an index Of a great soul.

Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.