Longevity conquers scandal every time..

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it w….

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If yo….

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the….

A fact is not a truth until you love it..

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way..

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't bel….

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything ….

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth – not a different truth: the same truth – only th….

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight..

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience..

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears..

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was on….

Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle ….

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, incl….

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us an is..

But the same thing was true in the army. You slept in a barracks with all kinds of people of every nationality, every trade, every character and qual….

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves..

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of ….

I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between m….

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made..