We've Pretended Too Much In Our Family,

Charleston Has A Landscape That Encourages Intimacy And Partisanship. I Have Heard It Said That An Inoculation To The Sights And Smells Of The Carolina Lowcountry Is An Almost Irreversible Antidote To The Charms Of Other Landscapes, Other Alien Geographies. You Can Be Moved Profoundly By Other Vistas, By Other Oceans, By Soaring Mountain Ranges, But You Can Never Be Seduced. You Can Even Forsake The Lowcountry, Renounce It For Other Climates, But You Can Never Completely Escape The Sensuous, Semitropical Pull Of Charleston And Her Marshes.

I Would Always Be A Better Hater Of Things And Institutions Than A Lover Of Them.

American Men Are Allotted Just As Many Tears As American Women. But Because We Are Forbidden To Shed Them, We Die Long Before Women Do, With Our Hearts Exploding Or Our Blood Pressure Rising Or Our Livers Eaten Away By Alcohol Because That Lake Of Grief Inside Us Has No Outlet. We, Men, Die Because Our Faces Were Not Watered Enough.

... Silence (can) Be The Most Eloquent Form Of Lying.

There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Beauty In A Woman And It Is Often A Burden As Crippling As Homeliness And Far More Dangerous. It Takes Much Luck And Integrity To Survive The Gift Of Perfect Beauty, And Its Impermanence Is Its Most Cunning Betrayal.