I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.

It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.

I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.

Like many young men in the South, he had trouble ruling out the possible. They are not like an immigrant's son in Passaic who desires to become a dentist and that is that. Southerners have trouble ruling out the possible. What happens to a... man to whom all things seem possible and every course of action open? Nothing of course.

Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.

Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.

Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.