Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.

The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it.

There's no word in the language I revere more than 'teacher.' My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I've honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming a teacher.

The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.

We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.

When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity. And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.