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

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

The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work.

If I'm not working, I'm not happy. That's it. That's the prerequisite for me for happiness.

There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.

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.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent