“Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.”

“I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating.”

“Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.”

“People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.”

“Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.”

“If a cat spoke, it would say things like 'Hey, I don’t see the problem here.”

“An author is a person who can never take innocent pleasure in visiting a bookstore again. Say you go in and discover that there are no copies of your book on the shelves. You resent all the other books - I don't care if they are Great Expectations, Life on the Mississippi and the King James Bible that are on the shelves.”

“When it's summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky. Put The Idiot in your lap or over your face, and you know where you are going to be for the afternoon.”

“So slip on your goggles and your reading trunks, for the sun is high. Let me leave you with one more thought. In what season of the year do we find ourselves - I'm speaking for a moment in terms of the physical world - wading through things? Surf. Kelp. Books. Summer.”

“Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.”

“Eaters of Wonder BreadMust be underbred.So little to eat.Where's the wheat?”