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.

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.

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 Quotes