The happiness of others. He adored them through tears.

Even now, after whatever gains feminism has made in involving fathers in the rearing of their children, I still think virtually all of us spend the most formative years of our lives very much in the presence of women.

I’ve met little meanness, wherever I went.

The older I’ve got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens – second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day’s events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.

We crave nothing less that the perfect story; And while we chatter or listen all our lives to a din of craving – jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days – We are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true; History is the will of a just God who knows us.

Writing is a fearsome but grand vocation – potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world.

Many Americans would die naked in the middle of the road before they’d tell you what’s hurt them most. But a born Southerner will show you the cell in their heart that burns the hardest. They’ll hold it out to you in their bare right hand.

Strength just comes in one brand – you. Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed.

Southerners ask intimate questions in the way monkeys groom each other for lice, not to pry but to make you feel cared for.