Verbs. All of them tiring.

...she knew in her heart that nature has a preference for a particular order: parents die, then children die. But it was a harsh design, offering little relief from pain, for being in accord with it means that the fortunate find themselves orphaned.

She wondered if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being.

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.

Mainly because people were what they were and you couldn't change them. most of the time, they couldn't change themselves, even if they were desperate to be somebody different from who they were. So, best keep your distance.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.