122 Quotes by Shelby Foote

They burnt crosses every night all around us, and a man who’ll burn what he prays to, he’ll burn anything.

These were the red hours of the conflict, hours no man who survived them would forget, even in his sleep, forever after. Fighting thus at arm’s length across that parapet, they were caught up in a waking nightmare, although they were mercifully spared the knowledge, at the outset, that it was to last for another sixteen unrelenting hours.

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.

Isn’t it odd, the attractiveness of type and paper and ink, bodying thoughts and descriptions? Isn’t it odd how much the sight can teach us about writing? Commas really look like commas in print.

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.

They were Amy and Jeff Carruthers and they rode south out of Bristol, gravel chattering under the upswept fenders. After a while the man said suddenly, “Whats it like?” Amy glanced out at the fields. “Cotton. Everywhere nothing but cotton.

Andrew Johnson. He had been lying rather low since the inauguration, yet he showed this evening that he had lost none of his talent for invective on short notice.

Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that’s many fathoms deep. If I’m not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake.

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