Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment an…

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

People always want to call me a Southern writer but though I grew up in the South, I don't feel that the label quite fits my work.

Life's not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.