"I got on a BEACH BOYS kick again about six months ago. I gew up in Southern California; to me, this songs speaks to a higher power."

"One of the most amazing books I ever read was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers was southern, and I’m southern. I wonder how much a non-southern person can appreciate some of the nuances that I consider very specific to that part of the country. In the subtlest, most unconscious ways, I’m able to get her description of, I don’t know, humidity in a way that somebody who lives near the Great Lakes will never really know. It was published when McCullers was, what—23 years old? I was still taking hour-long naps when I was 23. How remarkable that she had all that talent at her disposal at that age."

"Okay, Steel Magnolias. I have six aunts, and they’re all like my mom, and they’re all insane, but in a good way. That movie makes me think of them. And I’m also Southern, so it’s like, “Mmm, I get it.”"

"This is McCullers’s most vicious and finest work, though I love all her work. The narrative stars a closeted army captain on a Southern military base, and a surrounding cast of depressed, outrageous, flamboyant, and cruel characters, or rather, people."