Southerners are so devoted to genealogy that we see a family tree under every bush.

Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination.

It takes only one child to raze a village.

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmoth.

because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.

Updike's style is an exquisite blend of Melville and Austen: reading him is like cutting through whale blubber with embroidery scissors.

There is more sexism in a year's worth of movies than actually exists in a woman's entire lifetime.