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.

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

There was nothing particularly wrong with them; they were just the ordinary garden variety of human garbage.

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

[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.

For life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.