I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

I don't know what makes a good feature story. I've always assumed that if it was a story that interested or amused me, that it would have the same impact on other people.

That was the overwhelming thing to me, the joy of carrying my portable typewriter to an event and trying to describe it.

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 have spent a good part of my life looking for the perfect barbecue. There is no point in looking in places like Texas, where they put some kind of ketchup on beef and call it barbecue. Barbecue is pork, which narrows the search to the South, and if it's really good pork barbecue you are looking for, to North Carolina.

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

What you need for breakfast, they say in East Tennessee, is a jug of good corn liquor, a thick steak and a hound dog. Then you feed the steak to the dog.