"The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth — not a different…"

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

"Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I be…"

"Before the war, it was said 'the United States are' - grammatically it was spoken that way and thought of as a collec…"

"I think what Churchill said about the Civil War was correct: It was the last great romantic war and the first horrend…"

"When I was a hardworking, pistol-hot writer, I was unknown. Now that I’m a tired old man, they start hollerin’ how go…"

"There’s nothing better for a writer than to be reluctant to go to bed, anxious to wake up and start again. That’s liv…"

"Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery. Another was emancipation. It's a …"

"I learned to love my country, in two ways. I began to learn the geography of the South-the mountains, the rivers, the…"

"The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the…"