When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.

I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage.

Hey. Sometimes to conclusions.

That's what people do when they find a special place that wild and full of life, they trample it to death.

There's this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions.

I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.