“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

“Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.”

“Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.”

“It's politics . . . It makes everybody stupid. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean.”

“The pursuit of greatness means that laziness has no place in your life.”

“Wasn't Atlanta the murder capital of the U.S. last year?" "Yes, but the airport's perfectly safe.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”