Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.

We've pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we're all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth.

To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.'

Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn't come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.

Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.

Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.

Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.