I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume.

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

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.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens

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.

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

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