One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

All those layers of silence upon silence.

I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.

Beauty alters the grain of reality.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

There's a big anti-intellectual strain in the American south, and there always has been. We're not big on thought.

No money, holes in my socks, living off oatmeal.