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"My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America."
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Exlpore more War quotes
"Why have we built warships to bring home peace?"
"Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller."
"I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this - no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one."
"We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away."
Explore more quotes by David McCullough
"I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals."
"First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past."
"I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research."
"To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life."
"There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing."
"With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that."
"My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader."
"The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?"
"Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project."
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