“History...a release from the troublesome promiscuous present.”

“Other people's history can be read comfortably, the way a novel can be read comfortably. By my own history? I'm on the run from my own history, and catching my breath in the present. Escapist. But the merciless present pushes us back again toward our history. The mind keeps talking.”

“When you learn from experience and history, and try to walk down a different road, the present always reminds you that you need to walk down the road that experience and history did. This is why no one learns from experience and history.”

“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”

“Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of past ”

“History is always the interpretation of the present”