I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.

Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.

Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges.

If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you.

Craziness attacks the softest eyes and hamstrings the gentlest flanks.

(You) don't leave the chicken to watch the feed.

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.