Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.

Some things don’t mix. Some things don’t mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.

Families without songs are unhappy families.

South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better.