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

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.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.

Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.

But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.

A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.

He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring.

Some things don’t mix. Some things don’t mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.

A library could show you everything if you knew where to look.

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

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what `tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

Know this. I think you could be special if you only thought there was anything special about yourself.

I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.

In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.

Honor is the presence of God in man.

My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.

Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.

Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law.

Love's action. It isn't talk and it never has been.

We've pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we're all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth.

She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.

I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.

The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

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

Except for memory, time would have no meaning at all.

Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and the tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded the next time.

I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.

My mother's voice and my father's fists are two bookends of my childhood, and they form the basis of my art.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

The fruit tasted foreign but indigenous, like sunlight a tree had changed through patience.

...I realize words are never enough; they stutter and cleave to the roof of my mouth.

Time moves funny and it's hard to pin down. Occasionally, time offers you a hundred opportunities to do the right thing. Sometimes, it gives you only one chance.

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.

I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.

Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one's existence a minor work of art.

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

In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.

I take it as an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.