Families without songs are unhappy families.

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave

He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.

The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.

There is no downside to winning. It feels forever fabulous.

I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.

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.