All art is knowing when to stop.

It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman*

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?