I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

He unscrewed the lid, set it on the dash, snorted from the bottle twice, banged the steering wheel, and said, 'You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.'

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.

I said shut up once already, with my mouth.

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

The opening novel of the 'Bayou Trilogy' was the first one I finished.

I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.

For me, the existence of nonexistence of God is a nonissue.

If money could buy happiness, the rich would not drown their sorrows in expensive wine.

His hands are miracles. I can watch them for hours, transforming wood into something it never dreamed of being.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

Nothing is more precious than life... especially the life of your child.

I fully support the goal of species protection and conservation and believe that recovery and ultimately delisting of species should be the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's top priority under ESA.

Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women.

Remember; the only way to fight negativity is with positivity. Stay focused on the dreams.

I want to make movies that people talk about when they leave the theater, that aren't clear-cut, but effective and fulfilling in some sense.

He who made thee is made in thee. He is made in thee through whom you were made.... Give milk, O mother, to him who is our food; give milk to the bread that comes down from heaven.