I can think of no one more qualified to write about the modern South than Curtis Wilkie

When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it.

I came across a photograph of him not long ago... his black face, the long snout sniffing at something in the air, his tail straight and pointing, his eyes flashing in some momentary excitement. Looking at a faded photograph taken more than forty years before, even as a grown man, I would admit I still missed him.

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life.

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it.

The dog of your boyhood teaches you a great deal about friendship, and love, and death: Old Skip was my brother. They had buried him under our elm tree, they said-yet this wasn't totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.

As with many Southern Writers, I believe that the special quality of the land itself indelibly shapes the people who dwell upon it.

The Halifax area has long played a major role in Canada's military operations, being the port of departure for convoys, naval task forces and army units over the past 100 years or so.

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life.

As with many Southern Writers, I believe that the special quality of the land itself indelibly shapes the people who dwell upon it.