Quotes by Shelby Foote - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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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 / Historian
Depression
Believe
Instance
People
Prize
Worry
Believe Value People
Believe I Believe Value
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Longevity conquers scandal every time.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Time
Conquer
Longevity
Scandal
Conquers
Every Time
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I never cared what kind of grade I got.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Grades
Kind
Cared
Grade
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A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Men
War
Fighting
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A fact is not a truth until you love it.
Shelby Foote / Historian
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If you want to study writing, read Dickens
Shelby Foote / Historian
Study
Want
Writing
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I've never shown anybody a draft of anything.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Draft
Shown
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I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Bored
Ideas
Perfect
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A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Book
Educational
Reading
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Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Book
Ifs
Inspiration
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Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Hard Work
Knowing
Writing
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Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.
Shelby Foote / Historian
War
Grants
Learning Experience
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A combination of all that was best in the gladdest days of the departing year.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Happiness
Success
Years
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I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Firsts
Second Chance
Ten
Volume
Years
Ten Years
Third
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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 / Historian
History
War
United States
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I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Historical
Modern
Way
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People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Errors
People
Thinking
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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 / Historian
War
Civil War
Good Day
Writing
Civil
War Good Me
Slow
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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 / Historian
Hands
Heard
Trying
Usual
Writing
Quite
Began
Nearly
Writers
Hand
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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 / Historian
Discovering
Great Value
Making Mistakes
Mistake
Shortcuts
Thinking
Great Yourself Your
Mistakes
Shortcut
Value
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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 / Historian
History
War
Country
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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 / Historian
Fountain
Including
Paper
Typewriters
Want
Typewriter
Fountain Pen
Mechanical
Pen
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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 / Historian
Men
Difficulty
Punching
Real
Research
Thinking
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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 / Historian
Home
Folly
Loaded
Mankind
Mind
Novelty
Passion
Rules
Passions
Realm
Roam
Search
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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 / Historian
Battle
Dramatic
Glory
Lasted
Wonderfully
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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 / Historian
War
Crossroads
Hell
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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 / Historian
Men
East
West
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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 / Historian
Including
Interesting
Moved
Prose
Used
Writing
Rhythms
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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 / Historian
Sister
Book
Brother
Busy
Obliged
Sister In Law
Spending
Spending Time
Time Myself Never
Time Myself Busy
Brother And Sister
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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 / Historian
Dickens
Needs
Study
Teach
Teaching
Writing
Know Everything Need
Faulkner
John
Lawrence
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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 / Historian
Believe
Growing Up
Hard Times
Believes
Grow Up
Hard Time
How Much
Proper
Segregated
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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 / Historian
Book
Critical
Firsts
Printing
Successful
Success Good Me
Notices
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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 / Historian
Army
Character
Nationality
People
Same Thing
Slept
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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 / Historian
Air
Weather
Years
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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 / Historian
Adversity
Deprived
Thinking
Writing
Contribute
Helps
Largely
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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 / Historian
Accepted
Blame
Fighting
Including
Mistake
Everything Else
Grant
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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 / Historian
War
Loss
Memories
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The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth – not a different truth: the same truth – only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.
Shelby Foote / Historian
Imagination
Dust
Memories
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