I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.

One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.

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.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.

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

South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.