Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too.