“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.”

That makes history so appealing and so central to what I am trying to do.

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.

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.

If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones.” [Bashar] Assad’s people rebelled.

True or false, that never dies

When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking idly.

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

But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

Seated one day at the organ

One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.

There is no such cozy combination as man and wife.