Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

The fictional eye sees in, through, and around what is really there.

Out of love you can speak with straight fury.

When I read, I hear what's on the page. I don't know whose voice it is, but some voice is reading to me, and when I write my own stories, I hear it, too.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

Ah, I'm a woman that's been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then.

What we know about writing the novel is the novel.