A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

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.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

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