Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

In a country like France so ancient their history is full of outstanding people so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she or he is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history and Europe has helped write ours.

I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

The main thing is to make history not to write it.

Now there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.