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.

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

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.

I think we all get too caught up in doing instead of just being sometimes.

Some people think happiness is a luxury, but it's a necessity. You need to make space for it in your life.

I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

Let the blacksmith wear the chains he has himself made.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.

The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.

One thing I'm most proud of, in my movies, is that I think the performances are super-strong, but that's not all me. I think part of it is casting appropriately.

who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears?

We all think we're liberated when we have more of everything, don't we? That's what the media tell us.

I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.

I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.