What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts

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

She had awakened something in him that had slumbered far too long. Not only did he feel passion, he felt the return of hope.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children