. I have never lived anywhere but New York or New England, but there are times when I'm talking to you and I hit a Southern vowel, or a word gets caught in a Suthern truncation, and I know it's because I'm swimming in your cadences, that you penetrat...
Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ...
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. ...
I think in the old days, the nexus of weirdness ran through Southern California, and to a degree New York City. I think it's changed so that every bizarre story in the country now has a Florida connection. I don't know why, except it must be some inv...
John Smith: [to Porter] Prison is not about street gangs. It's about race. The Hispanics are cut in half. You got the northerners and the southerners. Trust me, they're always at war. With the blacks, you got a mixture of gangs who forget their beefs...
Hooper: Ah. Just like I thought... He came up with the Gulf Stream - from southern waters. [he pulls a Louisiana license plate from the shark. Brody examines it] Brody: He didn't eat a car, did he? Hooper: Naw, a tiger shark's like a garbage can, it'...
Butterfield: Twenty-two robberies. Over four hundred thousand dollars in losses. More in delays. The Southern Pacific will have Ben Wade convicted in a federal court. Hanged in public. An example made. And we will pay to make it happen. Ben Wade: Y'a...
The decision to write full-time meant I couldn't afford to buy a house. A friend kindly offered me the use of his apartment in a thirty-six-story building full of newlywed couples in the southern area of Jakarta. I didn't like my working space at fir...
Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought. Pride alone made them thin...
It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot o...
He had a hint of a Southern drawl, as if he’d worked hard to hide it, but couldn’t quite rid himself of the last of it. It was rough and gravelly, and had the seductive warmth of sinking into strong arms in front of a cozy fire. To my surprise, a...
Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly. They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the patch. By the time they reach New York, they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas ― stale and unprofitabl...
I have mo prejudice against the Southern people... They are just what we would ben in their situation. If slavery did not now exits amongst them, they wld not inrtoduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up... I surel...
I turned to leave and paused before the gap in the ruined wall. "One last thing, Your Majesty. I'd like a name I can put into my report, something shorter than typing out 'The Leader of the Southern Shapechanger Faction.' What should I call you?" "Lo...
Rain in the Northwest is not the pounding, flashing performance enjoyed by the eastern part of the nation. Nor is it the festive annual soaking I'd been used to in Southern California. Rather, it's a seven-month drizzle that darkens the sky, mildews ...
There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cr...
Who are you? Rabbit and Souris call you ‘Alice,’ me and Dee call you ‘Faye.’ I just didn’t know if ‘Alice’ was your poker-playing, Southern Hemisphere name or what. Hey, I’m just trying to fit in here. If I should be introducing mysel...
I wasn't political in 1984, but I did have a friend in Winnemucca who was a 'Southern Democrat.' He was raised in Georgia, and when he moved to Nevada, he was still a Democrat, and he ran for office, and I knew that I couldn't vote in the primary for...
[Wilson is trying to goad Torrey into drawing on him] Wilson: I guess they named a lot of that Southern trash after old Stonewall. Frank 'Stonewall' Torrey: Who'd they name you after? Or do you know? Wilson: I'm saying that Stonewall Jackson was tras...
And even those who claim to read the Bible literally and to lead their lives according to its precepts are, in actual practice, highly selective about which parts of the Bible they live by and which they don't. Jesus' condemnations of wealth and war ...
"Hatchet" Harry: How did you get your hands on these, then? Big Chris: The boys had 'em. I know you like these sort of things, wondered if you wanted 'em. "Hatchet" Harry: Yeah, I'll have 'em. Barry the Baptist: Was it hard work getting the money? Bi...
