Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of sweet gardens and the town ached beneath a canopy of promissory fragrance.

I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.

A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.

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

A story untold could be the one that kills you.

It is the secret life that sustains me now, and as I reach the top of that bridge I say it in a whisper, I say it as a prayer, as regret, and as praise. I can't tell you why I do it or what it means, but each night when I drive toward my southern home and my southern life, I whisper these words: 'Lowenstein, Lowenstein.