If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she liver with, her only boy.

Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.