"From the time I made my first sale, a 1500-word short story in 1950, writing an entertaining narrative was my chief goal."
"I think Dickens influenced my writing in the sense that he was such a marvelous delineator of character, creating unforgettable people, and he combined this with a strong sense of social justice. Stylistically he was a genius, but very much of his own period; I couldn't write a novel in a similar way even if I had the talent, which I don't. One respect in which my work mirrors Dickens is that I have very strong beliefs about issues I've written about, notably slavery and its consequences."
"The appeal of our Civil War is obvious: the inherent drama of American fighting American, in the years of the greatest social change, in the shortest time, in all of our history. My long-held interest in Civil War spying was sparked by reading I did years ago."
"Watch a movie; have a good night's sleep. The unconscious often comes up with the right answer for going forward."
