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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way.