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'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.

Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.

By not having to live up to people's expectations, I was somehow free.

God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.

Tenderness relieves strength that encumbers.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

When we try to push the envelope, there are certain sectors of society that say this is a Zionist plot to sort of destabilize our country, or this is an American agenda.

I was in a very deep, dark slump, and I needed to find a way to get myself out of it. I had to force myself back out into life, back out into experiencing things.

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.

I just started using this app called Wine and Dine. It's like Instagram, but only for food. You post what you're eating and follow your friends, and then you can say, 'I wanna try that,' and so when you go on your 'wanna try' list, it'll tell you where it is.

I was going to buy a book on hair loss, but the pages kept falling out.

By the age of 11, I was no longer going to Sunday Mass, and going on birdwatching walks with my father. So early on, I heard of Charles Darwin. I guess, you know, he was the big hero. And, you know, you understand life as it now exists through evolution.

I attended the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, and back then, national governments waited until days before to submit climate plans, and the U.S. based its pledge on a proposed bill that would fail in the Senate.

I guess there seems to be clubs opening up again, which is strange.

I once witnessed more ardent emotions between men at an Elks' Rally in Pasadena than they could ever have felt for the type of woman available to an Elk.

My whole life, I have been trying to cook an egg in the right way.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

You know what, life is full of temptations.

You have to raise the bar. Give yourself a challenge. Ask yourself, 'How can one make the impossible materialise?'

I can be a guy's guy and go to a game. But at the end of the night, I can still get dressed up for a date. There are a million different personalities that are part of me.

An original something, dear maid, you would wish me to write; but how shall I begin? For I'm sure I have not original in me, Excepting Original Sin.

When you're having conversations about actors, you realize these same conversations have happened about you. If you want to make a film for $5m, then you cast A, B and C, but if you want $20m, you won't be able to cast them, you need X, Y and Z.

I see a cute guy in Starbucks and I'm like... 'Oh, okay,' and I walk out. But who knows? Maybe I will ask somebody on a date soon!