Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.
Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.
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.
My mother raised me to be a writer.
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.