I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you.

Professional Southerners sicken me.

Literature is the history of the soul.

What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is... We are all overbrained and overemotioned.

You need to see a bit of hell now and then. That, and great joy.

If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.

The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

Pender laughed. "Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.

I am not seeing myself in your eyes, I think someone has replaced me

Decision power is knowledge-based, wisdom-driven and character-oriented.

I hadn't grown up always aspiring to be a CEO.

I can’t tell by looking in your eyes whether you’re a priest or a crook.

You might as well deny 'Mormonism,' and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives.

You each have the same energy and it sings within you. You need not be shy of it, it is your own. You need not look to gurus, or Gods, or Seths. It dwells within your own being.

So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.

Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves.