War is at best barbarism.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

The voice of the people is the voice of humbug.

What makes one strong is not the ability to confront adversity and cruelty, but rather the ability to love in spite of it.

These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.

empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble.

Grandmam came back from that distance in time that separates grandmothers from their grandchildren and made herself a mother to me.

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

I never take that for granted, but I'm always very aware that I'm one person and I can't wear everything.

What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

I wanted to be a nun. I saw nuns as superstars. When I was growing up I went to a Catholic school, and the nuns, to me, were these superhuman, beautiful, fantastic people.

I am one of those authors who believes (perhaps foolishly) that she is in complete control of the story.

Pain is the precursor to change.