We are living history.

History is a series of similes for what can not be assimilated.

The accidental and the arbitrary have everything to do with personal history and identity, just as they have to do with cultural history and identity.

History retells the same story of egregious deeds based on ordinary needs over and over again.

In order to have a history we have to tell it. We come into possession of our histories in the repeated ceremony of invention we call history telling.

Ethics is born when we are able to imagine history, both personal and collective, from the point of view of vulnerability, of undergoing instead of overcoming.

History is intimately allied with the spirit of melancholy.

History at once integrates and obfuscates the fates and flavors of countless unknown and unknowable individuals.

Deception, especially self-deception, is the heartbeat of history.

Vanity, the hunger for the illusion of significance, is at least as important a moving force in history as literal hunger in the belly.