And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

I've never shown anybody a draft of anything.

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

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe.

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.

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 you need to know about writing.

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.

I ran into Ku Klux Klan and the threat of hurricanes, and those two things made me decide not to build on the Alabama coast, so we came back to Memphis.

I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume.

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 believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

I never cared what kind of grade I got.

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

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 quality you can imagine, and that was a good experience.

Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister.

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 me and the paper.

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 you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something.

And I really do think that the difficulty of research makes it more real to you than punching a thing to find out how many men were killed at this particular action.

I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh.

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

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 process.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

Shiloh is a wonderfully dramatic battle. The leader of one side is killed, and the other one is going on to glory, and it was the first great battle. It lasted two days.

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

Well fight them sir til hell freezes over and then sir we will fight them on the ice.

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 was a hell of a crossroads.

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. The library is the university.

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

I mean the only thing that is hopefully good about us is after the arguments we can actually still face each other the next day or the day after and talk about something else and sort of get over it.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I'm working harder than ever now, and I'm putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That's my philosophy.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

The Pawnee chief had left the village the day after the doctor arrived, with 50 or 60 horses and many people, and had taken his course to the north of our route.