If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.

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

Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

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.

One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.