when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.