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

Tell me a story of deep delight.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

For the truth is a terrible thing.