guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.

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

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

Hospitality is gold in this City; you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing like that hard case last winter.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.