If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us an is.

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has.

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation.

What's next? If there are vampires in there, they probably drink artificial blood plasma substitute.

His smile is laced with dynamite.

...do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so he would have to be mean.

Which reminded me...I still owed the gods a debt."You're a genius, " I (Percy) told Annabeth.

Dog! When we first met on the highway of life, we came from the two poles of creation.... What can be the meaning of the obscure love for me that has sprung up in your heart?

It is not what you have on you, but what you have in you.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.

Thought is energy. Active thought is active energy; concentrated thought is a concentrated energy. Thought concentrated on a definite purpose becomes power.

As long as I can buy records and books and maybe some clothes, I'm pretty stoked. I don't need a yacht or anything.

Many parts of my life are perfectly ordinary, if that's what you mean. One could even call it boring, but that's what I like about it.