All life connects ... Nothing happens that is meaningless..

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry..

Humanity is best described as inhumanity..

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as b….

I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarke….

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck an….

My mother raised me to be a writer..

I've never cackled with laughter at a single line I've ever written. None of it has given me pleasure..

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough..

I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival..

What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell i….

Saints make wonderful grandfathers and lousy husbands..

Honor is the presence of God in man..

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into you….

Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, e….

Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship. I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Caroli….

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'.

To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron fro….

I only hope to do well enough before I die to have a house as big as my rich Uncle Ed and Aunt Carole..

There's no word in the language I revere more than 'teacher.' My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher, and it always has. I've honored ….

I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood..