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

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

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

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

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.

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.