Shelby Foote Quotes & Sayings

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. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. — Shelby Foote

I never cared what kind of grade I got. — Shelby Foote

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves. — Shelby Foote

North was only a direction indicated by a compass
if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation. — Shelby Foote

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has. — Shelby Foote

When you're working very hard you're not lonely; you are the whole damn world. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume. — Shelby Foote

They will tell you Shiloh was no cavalry battle; the field was too cut-up with ravines and choked with timber for the usual mounted work. However, none of Forrest's men realized this at the time and we had our moments — Shelby Foote

I can't begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

On Lee as commander: He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor. — Shelby Foote

But as they walked home together through the leaf-plastered streets, under that eerie refulgence, her father seemed to have divined her plans. This was in his manner, not his words: they were halfway home before he spoke. "Amanda," he said. He paused. "I want you to realize the consequences before you do something youll be sorry for." He did not look at her, and she too kept her eyes to the front. "You know that when I say a thing I mean it - I mean it to the hilt. So tell your young man this, Amanda. Tell him that the day you marry without my consent I'll cut you off without a dime. Without so much as one thin dime, Amanda. I'll cut you off, disown you, and what is more I'll never regret it. I'll never so much as think your name again." Up to now he had spoken slowly, pausing between phrases. But now the words came fast, like fencing thrusts. "Tell your young man that, Amanda, and see what he says." Major — Shelby Foote

We were green; most of us had never left home before (officers as well as men, except the officers carried their greenness better) yet here we were, traveling south up an enemy river past slow creeks and bayous and brooding trees. I thought to myself if this was the country the Rebels wanted to take out of the Union, we ought to say thank you, good riddance — Shelby Foote

On paper, in the colonel's lamp-lit office, when we saw a problem it was easy to fix; all we had to do was direct that corps commanders regulate their columns so as not to delay each other, halting until crossroads were clear, keeping their riles well closed, and so forth. It didn't work that way on the ground, which was neither flat nor clean - nor, as it turned out, dry — Shelby Foote

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight ... — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

But they were all thinking the selfsame thing: I might be a disgrace to my country. I might be a coward, even. But I'm not up there in those woods getting shot at — Shelby Foote

That was what bothered him most: the fact that she seemed to encourage his advances, and even granted him certain liberties, up to the point at which she turned on him with violence or laughter. He did not know which was worse, the chuckling or the blows; there was something terribly unmanly about being on the receiving end of either. But he looked forward to a time when he could repay her, could laugh at her or strike her as he saw fit. Thus marriage was already in his mind. Next — Shelby Foote

It was a strange thing to be in a distant land, among things you'd never seen before, all because our people in Congress had squabbled among themselves and failed to get along and there were hotheads in the South who thought more of their Negroes and their pride than they did of their country — Shelby Foote

With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding — Shelby Foote

A combination of all that was best in the gladdest days of the departing year ... — Shelby Foote

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 — Shelby Foote

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 — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

A fact is not a truth until you love it. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

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. — 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. — Shelby Foote

It wasn't a question of luck, the way some folks will tell you; they will tell you it's back luck to be near the wounded. It was just that we didn't want to be close to them any longer than it took to run past, the way you wouldn't want to be near someone who had something catching, like smallpox — Shelby Foote

Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said went far toward confirming one's belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute. — 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. — Shelby Foote

Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things ... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. — Shelby Foote

But it seemed so wrong, so scandalous, somehow so unreligious for a dead man to have to keep on fighting - or running, anyhow - that it made me sick at my stomach. I didn't want to have any more to do with the war if this was the way it was going to be — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience. — Shelby Foote

He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward. Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting. — Shelby Foote

We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies. Politician turned Union General Nathaniel Banks, in plea he couldn't abandon an untenable position. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

Not married until 33, Abraham Lincoln said, A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that cannot hurt me. — Shelby Foote

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

The money was tobacco money, not from the growing end but the manufacturing; they were from Winston-Salem, and there was plenty of it. Even Jeff who was a younger son (as Amy's father had been, in the days before the increased popularity of cigarettes boosted the fortune) could look forward to something over a million in his own name after three brothers by his father's first wife had got theirs. — Shelby Foote

People want to know why the South is so interested in the Civil War. I had maybe, it's a rough guess, about fifty fistfights in my life. Out of those fifty fistfights, the ones that I had the most vivid memory of were the ones I lost. I think that's one reason why the South remembers the war more than the North does. — Shelby Foote

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is ... it made us an is. — Shelby Foote

Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle blades stirring the air up close to the ceiling but nowheres else ... — Shelby Foote

Later they took him to Jackson and that explained it; he was crazy. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

I've never shown anybody a draft of anything. — Shelby Foote

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears. — Shelby Foote

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there. — Shelby Foote

They took it for more than it was, or anyhow for more than it said; the container was greater than the thing contained, and Lincoln became at once what he would remain for them, "the man who freed the slaves." He would go down to posterity, not primarily as the Preserver of the Republic-which he was-but as the Great Emancipator, which he was not. — Shelby Foote

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. — Shelby Foote

Jeff and Amy were part of this, though never in the sense that the natives were. They were not indigenous: they were outlanders, 'foreigners,' distinguished by a sort of upcountry cosmopolitan glaze which permitted them to mingle but not merge. Even their drinking habits set them apart. Deltans drank only corn and Coca-Cola; gin was perfume, scotch had a burnt-stick taste. They would watch with wry expressions while Amy blended her weird concoctions, pink ladies and Collinses and whiskey sours, and those who tried one, finally persuaded, would sip and shudder and set the glass aside: "Thanks" - mildly outraged, smirking - "I'll stick to burrbon. — Shelby Foote