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.

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.

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 only the brooding desolation.

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 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.

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.

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