“It was august. for years it was august … . there was heat like wet gauze and a high, white sky and music coming from everywhere at once.”

“August in Mississippi is different from July. As to heat, it is not a question of degree but of kind. July heat is furious, but in August the heat has killed even itself and lies dead over us.”

“Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.”

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

“Knowing him, he's probably got zero underwear because of the August heat wave.”

“I'd heard August say more than once, "If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you." T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me over, and August was giving it to him.”