Shelby Foote

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

— 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…

— Shelby Foote

“Later they took him to Jackson and that explained it; he was crazy.”

— Shelby Foote

I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't…

— 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…

— 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…

— Shelby Foote

“In the old army there was a story that in his [Braxton Bragg] younger days, as a lieutenant commanding one of several…

— 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…

— Shelby Foote

“We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies." Politician turned Union General Nathaniel…

— Shelby Foote

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us…

— 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

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things...…

— Shelby Foote

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth – not a…

— Shelby Foote

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a…

— Shelby Foote

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard…

— 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

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

— Shelby Foote

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

— Shelby Foote

“Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and…

— Shelby Foote

If you want to study writing, read Dickens

— Shelby Foote

And I really do think that the difficulty of research makes it more real to you than punching a thing to find…

— Shelby Foote

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had…

— Shelby Foote

“I can’t begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.”

— Shelby Foote

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

— Shelby Foote

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

— Shelby Foote