Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
All Quotes by author - Shelby Foote
" 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. "
Good
Good Day
Me
" 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. "
Action
Men
Research
" But the same thing was true in the army. You slept in a barracks with all kinds of people of every nationality, every trade, every character and quality you can imagine, and that was a good experience. "
Experience
Character
Good
" Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister. "
Brother
Think
Sister
" I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry. "
Writing
Trying
Find
" I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper. "
Want
Pen
Anything
" If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing. "
Know
Need
Teach
" I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh. "
Mistake
Science
Nature
" I never cared what kind of grade I got. "
Got
Never
Grade
" I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. "
Believe
Way
Value
" 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. "
Mistakes
Think
Value
" 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. "
Think
Adversity
Experience
" I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume. "
Years
Five
First
" 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. "
Used
Poetry
Writing
" I've never shown anybody a draft of anything. "
Never
Anybody
Anything
" Longevity conquers scandal every time. "
Every Time
Time
Scandal
" Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves. "
Most
Word
Books
" 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. "
Book
Me
Success
" Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home. "
Rules
Most
Home
" Shiloh is a wonderfully dramatic battle. The leader of one side is killed, and the other one is going on to glory, and it was the first great battle. It lasted two days. "
Leader
Two
Side
" When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking. "
Society
You
Thinking
Check our other websites:
BookDark
MusicDark