You have to pay for this view (onto which he looks while writing), so our expenses keep us pretty motivated to write. It's a vicious cycle.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of: Wherefore, let they voice, Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

Exaggeration is a branch of lying.

If it's right and true, it's listened to and accommodated.

It's an honor to serve, to have run with the president-elect [Donald Trump] and to have the opportunity to serve with him, but I've also become very fond of him . We've become good friends.

I am a firm believer that the pull for human beings is towards the good, generally outweighing the bad.

Ask the right questions, and the answers will always reveal themselves.

Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.

Even though we sometimes would not get a thing, we were happy with the joy the day would bring.

There are a million things out there every single day that trigger me - songs, smells, even the season that we're in, fall. Something about the air.