When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

William Ferris has long reigned as the unimpeachable source of the entire southern experience. His work on southern folklore and the composition of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture have made him both legendary and necessary. His book, The Storied South , is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It's a crowning achievement of his own storied career.

When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.

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

The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.