“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.”

There has always been a tendency – race notwithstanding.

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.

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.

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

Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, “life to the limit.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

Every day you and I walk through God’s shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

Actually, I am loathe to admit, but I also remember freshman year of Emory – and I’m so sorry to have to admit this – but there was a Domino’s Pizza in Emory Village, where I went to college, and I was ordering a pizza.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn’t intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play