In a life properly lived, you're a river.

Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.

Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.

Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing each other out. We set this house on fire, forgetting that we live within. (from "To a Meadowlark," for M.L. Smoker)

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.