A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn't do.

If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.

The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.