But for the present I would lie there and know I didn't have to get up, and feel the holy emptiness and blessed fatigue of a saint after the dark night of the soul. For God and Nothing have a lot in common. You look either one of Them straight in the eye for a second and the immediate effect on the human constitution is the same.

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.

The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.

Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.

Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.