In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.
South Carolina is not a state; it is a cult.
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.
Love’s action. It isn’t talk and it never has been.
A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts...
A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.
You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.
The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.
Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and the tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded the next time.
Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.
But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.
The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.
The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism.
Honor is the presence of God in man.
Cameras are a lifesaver for very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers.
I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.
But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.
My father wouldn’t let me take typing in childhood.
Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.