“I drove all night, northeast, and once again I felt it was literature I had been confronting these past days, the archetypes of the dismal mystery, sons and daughters of the archetypes, images that could not be certain which of two confusions held less terror, their own or what their own might become if it ever faced the truth. I drove at insane speeds.”

“I was out of control, manic, less myself than I’d ever been. Like Eve must have felt after the fall, I reflected as I drove away. Leaving Eden for a land unknown.”

“No one has claim to originality in literature; all writers are more or less faithful amanuenses of the spirit, translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes.”

“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.”

“You drive me fucking insane sometimes." I drove myself fucking insane.”

“When I got started again, I drove slower and felt smaller. I think it does us all good to get looked at like that now and then by a wild animal.”