We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.

He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

One must not be shy where language is concerned.

Everyone knows everything eventually.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.