I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

It's that enthusiasm, that passion for what you're doing, that is most important.

I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.