Country music historically has been sort of middle-aged people's music.

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.

Only a positive mind can move the world forward.

I am a great woman.

When you grow up, your heart dies.

My life is being ruined by the internet!

I have a hard enough time speaking for myself - I don't pretend I can be a spokesman for anybody. I have no interest in playing that role.

Sometimes you get into a situation and realize that there is so much more to explore there and ask, why are we jumping off the cliff quite yet?

When you start a game, you don't think to yourself, "well, OK, I'm going throw a one-hitter today." It just becomes an organism, your outing becomes an organism and it grows.

Writing is a particular kind of frustration, which is why when I was making the structure for the novel I visualized it for myself with a color-coded board so I could see it.

The key to happiness is not to make yourself into a different person; it is to let yourself be even more of who you really are.

I don't want to be THE president, but I would like to have A president.