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

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

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.

Until you stalk and overrun, you cannot devour anyone. -Hobbes

Some of the punks didn’t know what to make of us, but I finally realized that was what made us punk. We sang what we meant, from the heart, and didn’t worry about what anyone was going to think.

Has there ever been anyone quite like Paul Pierce ? No.

When you try to be everything to everyone, you accomplish being nothing to anyone

Don’t let anyone tell you your dreams don’t have value. They do.

I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

I get upset over a bad shot just like anyone else. But it’s silly to let the game get to you.

The world doesn’t need any more hot chicks or tough guys or smooth talkers – the world needs more you. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.