A small profit is better than a big loss.

Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.

But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.

We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times were until I left, but I guess that's the way of it

A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world

She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)