Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact as of the writing of this column millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.

More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective that is all that writing is about.

Irish fiction is full of secrets guilty pasts divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.

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.

Great writing can be done in biography history art.

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history for instance because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it.

Without words without writing and without books there would be no history there could be no concept of humanity.

Got good news and bad news for you Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and perhaps your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

We all have a hungry heart and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading walking around the woods in Ohio where I grew up.

There is a set of religious or rather moral writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine and to which we have but one objection namely that it is not true.