In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.

The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.

A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.

At first I read mostly books by Southern authors - black and white - because almost all the people I knew were born and raised in the South, starting with my mother. I remember I got a lot of Erskine Caldwell.

Calvin had long been uneasy in his own person and so lived to put everyone else at ease.

I'm fascinated by the awful, awful things that human beings do to each other.

When you grow up with a mother who has to wash dishes and clean hotel rooms, you know the importance of having a job, and you cant be without a job for any length of time, or you will be without anything.