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

You have to realize that your work is done by your body, and if your body is in very bad health, it's not going to work for you no matter how young you are. So, I'm a bit of an athletic coach when it comes to trying to respect my body's needs and tendencies, and when I teach students, I try and persuade them of the same.

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

Even now, after whatever gains feminism has made in involving fathers in the rearing of their children, I still think virtually all of us spend the most formative years of our lives very much in the presence of women

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.

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

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it.

I've met little meanness, wherever I went.

Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you.

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

Many Americans would die naked in the middle of the road before they'd tell you what's hurt them most. But a born Southerner will show you the cell in their heart that burns the hardest. They'll hold it out to you in their bare right hand.

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