Sean Wilentz Quotes

Reading to kids is to ordinary reading what jazz is to a string quartet.

Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles places the loyalist experience and the aftermath of the American Revolution in an entirely new light. Alongside the Spirit of 1776, Jasanoff gives us the Spirit of 1783, dedicated to remaking the mighty British Empire, and then offers a stunning reinterpretation of the Loyalists' complicated role in that remaking. Her meticulously researched and superbly written account is historical revision at its finest, and it affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation.

To say that poverty explains terror is to slander those caught in poverty who choose to lead worthy lives. [Terrorists] are not the oppressed, but they are the parasites of the oppressed.

One of the reasons that any person writes anything is to try and keep his own sanity together.

Politics is about who wins and loses. The rest is of marginal interest.

I think that's what Dylan's trying to do: to create a space artistically where something else can take shape, can take life - where there's hope.