“That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness...”

“Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.”

“I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body - even this old beat-up carcass - that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh!”

“Cats regard people as warm-blooded furniture.”

“We jumped into water so clear and warm that it was like jumping from air to air. The sand rose up under us and we floated to where it met the sea and walked out of the water like creatures in an act of evolution.”

“I loved the landscape, the heat, the unhurried days, the fragrant and languorous nights. But there was something else, too; a sense of belonging that went beyond birth, that held me to a past beyond my own, to an identity I could no more discard than I could discard my own skin. I was a Southerner, all the way through to the bone.”