I Still Write In Long Hand. I

She Was One Of Those Southerners Who Knew From An Early Age That The South Could Never Be More For Them Than A Fragrant Prison, Administered By A Collective Of Loving But Treacherous Relatives.

Reading Is The Most Rewarding Form Of Exile And The Most Necessary Discipline For Novelists Who Burn With The Ambition To Get Better.

Her Library Would Have Been Valuable To A Bibliophile Except She Treated Her Books Execrably. I Would Rarely Open A Volume That She Had Not Desecrated By Underlining Her Favorite Sections With A Ball-point Pen. Once I Had Told Her That I Would Rather See A Museum Bombed Than A Book Underlined, But She Dismissed My Argument As Mere Sentimentality. She Marked Her Books So That Stunning Images And Ideas Would Not Be Lost To Her.

Good Coaching Is Good Teaching And Nothing Else.

Basketball Allowed Me To Revere My Father Without Him Knowing What I Was Up To. I Took Up Basketball As A Form Of Homage And Mimicry.