Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and the tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded the next time.

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.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

Through sports a coach can offer a boy a secret way to sneak up on the mystery that is manhood.

She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.

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