It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.

Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of South Carolina, placed me in the town along Red hook Road, and changed me the way good books always do.

Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?

Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.