But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the US to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

Drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics.

Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.

I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

Southerners smile more than other Americans.

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

Why can I write 'South' with some assurance that you'll know I mean Richmond and don't mean Phoenix? What is it that the South's boundaries enclose?

If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.

Any Southern nationalist movement, especially one that wraps itself in the Confederate flag, is going to be viewed with suspicion, given the historical record.

These demands of life are so universal that either we like it or not, we are going to come across them one way or another. The response we give determines what our lives become.

I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

The woman with dark hair, wide hips, and a few extra pounds has always been the essence of beauty in Morocco.

Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.

Sometimes I think I know everything, but I also underestimate what God really is.

What we discover is it was not the waves or the birds or the wind that were standing out and being separate from existence; it was we who were standing out and being separate from existence.

She's an amazing dog and really inspired everything that's in this book.

The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.

The only people who need to be "giving back" are thieves, criminals and corrupt individuals that are taking things that are not theirs.