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. – Joyce Carol Oates

A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life. – Allen Johnson, The Historian and Historical Evidence