I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.

Fincher was the kind of Southerner who will try to address you through a web of deep and antic southernness, and who assumes every body in earshot knows all about his parents and history and wants to hear an update about them at every opportunity. He looks young, but still manages to act 65.

I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one.

I love character and voice, and my favourite books have been the ones in which I've become completely absorbed.

If there's not any endgame, we're in quicksand. We take one more step, and we're still there, and there's no way out.

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him.