“Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.”

“Apparently, it used to be extremely common for families to have two parents. They stayed together because that’s what all the other parents did. Now there are so many options, so many different ways to be a family. So many ways to rip a family apart.”

“The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy.”

“A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.”

“Maybe that's why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don't make them feel so much worse.”

“It's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.”