“I do wonder why women are always hemorrhaging in American literature.-Pat Peoples”

“The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.”

“Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.''It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”

“But I'll tell you the same thing I tell my students when they complain about the depressing nature of American literature: life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for people to endure nobly.”

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”

“I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”