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

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us an is.

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.

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

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.

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.

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