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

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.

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way.

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from 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.

A combination of all that was best in the gladdest days of the departing year.

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.