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

Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.

There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.

A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.