“What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?”

“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.”

“This town is like Gone with the Wind on mescaline!" From Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

“In the wind, the trees, like agitated lions preparing to roar, shook their great green manes.”

“Monks congregate like dogs in a kennel,From contact with their superiors they acquire knowledge,Is one the course of the wind, is one the water of the sea?Is one the spark of the fire, of unrestrainable tumult?Monks congregate like wolves,From contact with their superiors they acquire knowledge.They know not when the deep night and dawn divide.Nor what is the course of the wind, or who agitates it,In what place it dies away, on what land it roars.”

“I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring.”