It is inconceivable that even the gang who runs Russia would be willing to take on war, but one always has to remember that there seemed to be no reason in 1939 for Hitler to start war, and yet he did, and he started it with a world practically unprepared.

As in the war of 1941-45, our victory and our survival depend on how and where we attack.

From 1941 to 1945 we won a war by enlisting the whole-hearted support of all our people and all our resources.

The present danger which this country faces is at least as great as the danger which we faced during the war with Germany and Japan. Briefly stated, it is the very real danger that this country, as we know it, may cease to exist.

If all Europe lies flat while the Russian mob tramps over it, we will then be faced with a war under difficult circumstances, and with a very good chance of losing it.

I ended the war a horse ahead.

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.

Every nation has its war party... It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition.

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on.

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

The United States stands with our friends in Britain as they recover from today's shock of terrorism. These barbaric acts strengthen our resolve and remind us all of the danger of complacency during our continued war on terror.