To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.

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• David McCullough:

  There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to

• David McCullough:

  The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In wh

• David McCullough:

  The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what

• David McCullough:

  People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you

• David McCullough:

  My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can mak

• David McCullough:

  My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on th

• David McCullough:

  In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you do

• David McCullough:

  I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are

• David McCullough:

  I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

• David McCullough:

  I would pay to do what I do if I had to.