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

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

My mother thought of my father as half barbarian and half blunt instrument, and she isolated him from his children.

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.

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

My mother raised me to be a writer.

But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.