“But archaeology […] often acts as a parallel narrative to history: if you start digging with a textbook in your hand, you are soon going to get confused. You have to be comfortable with the idea that there are many different versions of history.”

“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in. We will bury you.”

“Why don’t you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?”

“Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.”

“If you desire to rule and conquer, you don't just fold your hands when things go wrong, you act.”

“I do not see how the Creation can be turned into words, let alone letters, hardly even a fiction. History is always entirely different to what has happened. The facts are all fled from you before you start the story. History is simply a fact on its own. And the closer you try to approach the facts through history, the deeper you sink into fiction.”

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

“Every next level of your life will demand a different version of you.”

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.”