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" I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character. "

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" Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs. "

" I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do. "

" I don't hate children. My wife and I just didn't think we would be good parents, and also by the time we got married in 1968, we were pretty nose-down toward what we wanted to do, and having a child was going to be an excuse to fail. "

" The ways in which things are superficially similar but also distinct is interesting to me. "

" The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better. "

" It's interesting to leave a place, interesting even to think about it. Leaving reminds us of what we can part with and what we can't, then offers us something new to look forward to, to dream about. "

" Fear and hope are alike underneath. "

" Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it. "

" I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one. "

" Writing is the only thing I've ever done with persistence, except for being married. "

" If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years, I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting. "

" My father died in my arms. That's tumult. That's everything exploding. "

" I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life. "

" America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism. "

" There's a lot to be said for doing what you're not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what you're supposed to do are more subtle and take longer to become apparent, which maybe makes it less attractive. But your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built. "

" My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to. "

" Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing. "

" I had a Tourette's period. And obsessive compulsive disorder. Things would get in my brain that I couldn't get out of my brain. "

" I work really hard at these books, and when colleagues write nasty reviews of them, I take it very personally. "

" Your father has to die, better he dies in your arms. "

" Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known. "

" For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my writing life. I work absolutely flat out, giving it my all. "

" I think once you love somebody, you love somebody; that's just how it is. "

" In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on. "