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