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

A story untold could be the one that kills you.

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity.

All life connects ... Nothing happens that is meaningless.

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.

No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.

In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.