College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.

Once he had drawn first blood, his war against the property of the state lost all its moral resonance.

There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.

Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.

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.

I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.

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.