“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.”

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.

The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.

The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.

I wish I could write easily. I’m one of those guys who’s visited by the muse when things are dire.

She said fuck this and became her own muse.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

Sometimes the words just fall out of me when I’m around you. So there’s no need to say I’m talented, I’m just lucky to have you as my muse.

Why do I keep thinking, writing, dreaming of you? You don’t deserve to be my muse.

I want to be his peace and his raging fire. His muse and every desire.

Don’t be different just for different’s sake. If you see it differently, function that way. Follow your own muse, always.

I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.