When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that …

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

If your ambition comes at the price of an unbalanced life, that there's nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it's not worth it.

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

What the American Dream means to me is the fact that - what founded this country - when I think about those posters that were put up in Europe, which…

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think some people who go into public life, if they go in needing the applause of thousands, they're never going to work out successfully in the end…

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think confidence comes from doing something well, working at it hard, and you build it up. It's not something you're born with. You have to build t…

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his cou…

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

What I learned, more than anything, was that you can't have it all balanced perfectly at any one time. When I was young, it was much more balanced to…

- Doris Kearns Goodwin