Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.

Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.

Tweet, tweet, you're alive, you ignorant asshole.

I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

I think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does; it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.

For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?