“The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.”

“I have mo prejudice against the Southern people... They are just what we would ben in their situation. If slavery did not now exits amongst them, they wld not inrtoduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up... I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. (p52)”

“When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop.”

“I belive that people should fight for what they believe and only what they believe.”

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.”

“Not caring for their lives' is it?Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time.”