I don't know if I would do sequels. I almost feel like when I'm done with them, they're going to have to find their own way.

That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness.

I have a theory that Southern madhouses are full of gifted women who were stifled.

Perhaps the most important thing we can ever do in our lives is find a way to keep the wild-both the wild inside and the wild outside us-and tap into it.

I think every creative impulse that a working writer, or artist of any sort has, comes out of that dark old country where dreams come from.

Laughter nibbled at my lips like tiny fish in warm water.

I could run nearly naked on a hot, windy beach and plunge without care into a running diamond sea; roll on the sand and fling my arms wide to the sun and still be what I was...young.