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

The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.

Families without songs are unhappy families.

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

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

Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.