David H. Donald Lincoln Quotations

The truth is that I already had written a good deal about Lincoln in a peripheral fashion, but I had always stayed away from the main subject.

But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we're just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship.

I'm not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today.

And, finally, Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript. Though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!

Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public.

When I made the decision to go ahead with the project, I said I was going to try and write as if no other biography of Lincoln had yet been written.