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.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very much different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment for what it actually was; I suppose we never do. Instead, I only yawned, and shook myself from the momentary daze that had come upon me, and went on my way down the stairs.

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

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great