As a Magnolia, you are always onstage.

[W]hat should I have done? Gather dirt in my purse?

...I've been told that this building is here waiting for me. It's been my Buckingham Palace, my White House, my Taj Mahal, so coming here today as a real member is - well, it's a big deal.

...while you've never heard of her, in my mind she's practically a celebrity.

I've always liked Anna, but according to my mother, her family is complete New Money, and my grandmother has pointed out on several occasions that they're not even really Southern.

There is life and there is death, but on the border, where one shades into the other, there is the In Between. "...[M]ost people go through life without even knowing that it's there.

I'm named after my great grand-mother...while you've never heard of her, in my mind she's practically a celebrity.

You won't be able to find it out for yourself in any library or archive, either, because my grandmother has carefully and systematically destroyed every shred of evidence.

If not for her truly sparkling personality, she would have been doomed.

[W]hat my grandmother and my mother and I all know is that our beauty is no miracle. It is bought and paid for.

[M]y grandmother...had always complained that our house didn't have a profile that was "significant enough.

pretty girls behave better when you ignore them.

Writing the story of their own life allows the author to parse their story into examinable segments while continuing to engage in the act of communion and creation.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

Something gets lost when you translate. It's hard to keep straight. Perspective is every thing.

I think that fiction has this special responsibility or this special ability to help people to empathize, to demand of people that they understand other individuals and other people's experiences.

That's all it took to solve problems - just sense.

Don't ask people to do something you wouldn't.

In the long run, investing is not about markets at all. Investing is about enjoying the returns earned by businesses.

L'adulte' re introduit l'esprit dans la lettre quebien souvent le mariage e u" t laisse e morte. Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead.

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.