Shelby Foote

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.

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.

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.

I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery.

After ten years of word processing, I can't even do hand writing anymore.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.