122 Quotes by Shelby Foote

Fortuity itself, as the deadly game unfolded move by move, appeared to conform to a pattern of hard luck; so much so, indeed, that in time men would say of Lee, as Jael had said of Sisera after she drove the tent peg into his temple, that the stars in their courses had fought against him.

There is no chance for surprise,” he said, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders with that French way he had. “Theyll be intrenched to the eyes.

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.

When you’re working very hard you’re not lonely; you are the whole damn world.

In defensive warfare he was perfect,” he wrote years later. “When the hunt was up, his combativeness was overruling.

It’s not any fun in the dark,” he said, and she saw his eyes brimming with tears that glistened in the moonlight. She really felt sorry for him – even she. For what could be more pitiful than a voyeur in the dark?

You easy-living boys had better get set, they said. There’s johnnies out there thicker than fleas on a billy goat in a barnlot.

They nodded their heads with quick flicky motions, like birds, and nursed their rifles, keeping them out of the dirt. I had gotten to know them all in a month and a few of them were even from the same end of the county I was, but now it was like I was seeing them for the first time, different. All the put-on had gone out of their faces – they were left with what God gave them at the beginning.

What’s the harm in letting him have his fling?” he remarked of one of the worst of these; “If he did not pitch into me, he would into some poor fellow he might hurt.