Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

Or maybe it is only that we are so habitually inattentive that when some rare but simple geometry grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us into consciousness, we call our response sacred.

It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.

We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical

The past is a stronger influence in the South. But I think everywhere you have this sense that the world changes faster than you can accommodate yourself to. Looking back and seeing how you got where you are is a useful way to combat disorientation.