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.

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.

On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business.

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

Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.

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.

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.