When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

He unscrewed the lid, set it on the dash, snorted from the bottle twice, banged the steering wheel, and said, 'You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.'

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.

I said shut up once already, with my mouth.

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

The opening novel of the 'Bayou Trilogy' was the first one I finished.

I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.

Autopilot is great, and removal of thought is one of the highest ideals of training. But removal of thought in the moment must be preceded by purposeful thought beforehand.

The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered... This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us.

Without you to hold i'll be freezing.

An important question to ask is, 'Where and when did decoration and utility first meet?

Our self-love can less bear to have our tastes than our opinions condemned.

There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.

I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.

Desire is when you do what you want, will is when you can do what you do not want.

You never know. Down the road you can do a lot of product categories. But I think you really have to build your core first and for people to know you and respect you for that.

Theirs is the party that ... responds to the death of Americans at Benghazi by asking, What difference does it make?