I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

I think I learned about the relationship between books and life from Margaret Mitchell.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.