Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better.

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.

My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

Comely was the town by the curving river that they dismantled in a year's time. Beautiful was Colleton in her last spring as she flung azaleas like a girl throwing rice at a desperate wedding. In dazzling profusion, Colleton ripened in a gauze of sweet gardens and the town ached beneath a canopy of promissory fragrance.

Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges.

Saints make wonderful grandfathers and lousy husbands.