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

I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories.

Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.

All those layers of silence upon silence.

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.

Still when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life.

Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.