You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people their history their culture and their values.

The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.

The people and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments the governments alone independent of the interests of the people to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

You that would judge me do not judge alone this book or that come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon Ireland's history in their lineaments trace think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age who are still in the process of forming themselves as women and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves.

To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can't really control life - so you'd better live it while it's here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it.

When you're my age and you see a story you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.

There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings as men or women by our age our history our profession by the state of the world.

Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and now evolutionary biology.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

But look I was born in 1956 the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and by and large people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

A moment comes which comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

Every age has its own poetry in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation a race a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that from age to age nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.