“Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.”

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.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.

I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies.

The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.

She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.

Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me,

The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

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.

Laughter is the only strategy that has ever worked at all for me when my world is falling apart.

Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?

It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.

The most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.

Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it’s afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams.

She wouldn’t come back. She hated me. She hated Nan. She hated my mom. She hated her father. She wouldn’t come back here… but God, I wanted her to.

I’m portable. I carry a laptop and a little recording studio on my back.

I love you girl…to the moon and back.

There is competition. It’s almost like I’m back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film.

I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.

You can get samosas in any pub in England today, pretty much. So, “Gunga Din” has come back.

In an ideal world for me, I would like to go back and forth [between film and theater]. I kind of want to do it all

If I get an idea for a series that I really like, I’m sure I won’t be able to resist coming back and doing it.