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.

Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.