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

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.

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

I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

The Holy One is a flame.

Man does not live by bread alone.

If you could clearly envision the reality of the prize ahead, then only you could prevent yourself from proclaiming it.

To react is one's choice.

No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace.

You only hit a straight ball by accident. The ball is going to move right or left every time you hit it, so you had better make it go one way or the other.

Ralph Lauren and Valentino have a lot of common. Ralph Lauren was one of the first really to put himself at the center of the story, and Valentino was even earlier.

I was created in love. For that reason nothing can express my beauty nor liberate me except love alone.

I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure.

I think movies are great and I have a great time making them but they're not what keeps you warm at night, or what's ultimately the most important thing in anyone's life journey.