“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.”

American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them.

One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.

The Storied South , is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It’s a crowning achievement of his own storied career.

William Ferris has long reigned as the unimpeachable source of the entire southern experience. His work on southern folklore and the composition of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture have made him both legendary and necessary. His book,

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.

Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.

A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.

I’ve always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.

Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.

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

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature’s profligate generosity.

You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

Donald Trump – and I don’t dislike Donald one single bit – has no idea how good the Mexican people are at building tunnels.

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.

The guy who could be me, but he knows when to draw the line, is John Cena. John Cena can rock ‘n’ roll, let me tell you.

Anybody could say anything they want about me, and it literally never penetrates my skin.