Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better.
I bet they love those games on Friday night more than they do segregation.
I was becoming convinced that the world was a colorful, variegated grab bag full of bastards. But.
Generosity is the rarest of qualities in American writers.
I’ve always felt a vague sense of guilt that I search for plunder and inspiration in every book or poem or story I pick up. Other people’s books are treasures when stories emerge in molten ingots that a writer can shape to fit his or her own talents. Magical theft has always played an important part of my own writer’s imagination.
Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life.
No one has the patent on human suffering. People hurt in different ways and for different reasons.
But I had married a fine and comely girl, and with brilliance and craft and all instincts of self-preservation jettisoned, I succeeded over the years, through neglect, coldness, and betrayal, in turning her into the exact image of my mother.
They love their families with their hearts and souls and they wage war against them to prove it.
Young girls have an infinite capacity for being attracted to the wrong sort of men.
Her eyes were our keys to the palace of wildness.
We’ve made it back to each other. We’ve got lots of time to try our hands at restoring the ruins.
My life did not really begin until I summoned the power to forgive my father for making my childhood a long march of terror.
My approach to Charleston is always silent and distracted, but I come under full sail, with hissing silk and memories a wing above me in the shapes of the birds I love best.
The city of Charleston, in the green feathery modesty of its palms, in the certitude of its style, in the economy and stringency of its lines, and the serenity of its mansions South of Broad Street, is a feast for the human eye.
I never seemed to learn from joy; I earned my portion of wisdom through sadness.
He had the soul of a fortress and eyes that had peered at the world from battlements too long.
I felt the sharp sting of emptiness and solitude that you feel so acutely and with such internal sorrow and wonder whenever music is performed well.
Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves.
You blame your parents for so much, Tom. When does it start becoming your own responsibility? When do you take your life into your own hands? When do you start accepting the blame or credit for your own actions?
As I applauded, I knew that it would always be my burden, not that I lacked genius, but that I was fully aware of it.