The death of every art form seems imminent at least once in every century; but while the very funeral arrangements go forward, some child is born who is Michelangelo, Picasso, Yeats.

Southerners ask intimate questions in the way monkeys groom each other for lice, not to pry but to make you feel cared for.

Strength just comes in one brand - you. Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed

The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family.

Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you.

What I still ask for daily-for life as long as I have work to do, and work as long as I have life.

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.

The sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives.

Cities are the least permanent things in our civilization.

As a child I thought it was very boring when I had to sit with [my mother] on the city streets, but the time sank deep and surfaced later.

Writing is a fearsome but grand vocation—potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world.

... a door shuts in my face, but my face is already looking at another door, wondering when that one will close too and how many good things I would have gotten out of it when it does.

We are, for all our polish, of littlestature, and, as human lives, compared with authentic martyrs, of no account.

Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.

Lee Roy was the best college linebacker - bar none. He would have made every tackle on every play if they had stayed in bounds.

I have no stories to sell. A lot of my relationships are with civilians, and no one wants to hear about those.

I can move any crowd.

The tulip's petals shine in dew, All beautiful, but none alike.

Why do you have to be so annoying sometimes?" "Cant help it. It's the company I keep.

Right after we invaded Iraq, I put a sign on my lawn that said "War is not the answer." That sign was either defaced, ripped up, or stolen every week. I had to replace that sign twelve times.

The drum of the realization of the promise is beating, we are sweeping the road to the sky. Your joy is here today, what remains for tomorrow?