Laughter nibbled at my lips like tiny fish in warm water.

Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.

That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness.

I have a theory that Southern madhouses are full of gifted women who were stifled.

A real friendship is a light thing. A real friend holds you loosely.

Perhaps the most important thing we can ever do in our lives is find a way to keep the wild-both the wild inside and the wild outside us-and tap into it.

I don't think you ever think of a big city as sweet or community, but there are cities that I think of as charming and particular and interesting cities. I live in one now, Charleston.

Anger is its own excuse and its own reward.

I don't know if I would do sequels. I almost feel like when I'm done with them, they're going to have to find their own way.

Life can only be kept by giving it away. But then it will bloom.

I think every creative impulse that a working writer, or artist of any sort has, comes out of that dark old country where dreams come from.

A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.

One can give ‘correct’ opinion only if one has an open mind.

One gains more from a fast than a feast.

Champions know there are no shortcuts to the top. They climb the mountain one step at a time. They have no use for helicopters!

The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.

Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

Life is a movie, and you're the star. Give it a happy ending.

The sum of all the current regulations presents ever increasing hurdles.