Writing Is Very Hard Work And Knowing

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Fact Is Not A Truth Until You Love It.