Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

I think a writer is not an ideal husband... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed.

An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again.

I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder.

I do some eccentric dancing.

Certainly people have said a lot of deeply unfortunate and stupid things in Southern accents, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the accent itself.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.