But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.

I learned that if I could read, I could cook. I surprised myself I like it.

I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.

College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.

Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.