Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle blades stirring the air up close to the ceiling but nowheres else.

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation.

Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.

A combination of all that was best in the gladdest days of the departing year.

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way.