Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.

The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)

The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.