Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.

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

The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

My mother raised me to be a writer.

... the wing of a fly is proof enough of the existence of God for me.

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.