We go in to liberate Cuba, but Cuba still isn't free; we don't really think through what we'll do after the initial treaty is signed, but we're still occupying. There's chaos and torture and finally an outcry.

What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.

One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.

Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?

History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.

I seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered Lincoln.

I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.

I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.

In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Most people don't like to talk about violent historical death.

My audience is going to die before I do.

Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.

The one time I was an actor, it happened to be in a globally dominant juggernaut. That was lucky.

The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.

I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further.