“Ah, Fist, it’s the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.”

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?”

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”

“Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.”

“In law school, I never understood [antitrust law]. I later found out, in reading the writings of those who now do understand it, that I should not have understood it because it did not make any sense then.”

“Ah, who will write the history of what might have been?”

“Those who ignore history’s lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them…they may be forced to die by them.”

“Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.”

“But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read.”

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.”