Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

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

She thought she brought a gift of compassion for those exhausted souls who had not received a chest portion from the people who raised them. If compassion and therapy did not work, she could always send her patients to the local pharmacy for drugs.

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

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.

Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.

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