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

Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.

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.

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

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

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

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.