For only with the deepest knowledge can one diagnose that most elusive of conditions: the truth.
Don’t keep a girl guessing too long, or she’ll find the answer somewhere else.
But fear and danger aren’t always directly proportional. We’re all terrified by rattlesnakes, but the spider we brush off our sleeve with hardly a thought is far more likely to hurt us.
As we move, a roar like the voice of some satanic creature bellows from the staircase. The fire’s voice. I’ve heard it in lots of places, and the sound turns my insides to jelly. There’s a reason huma...
All partnerships fail in the end, just like marriages. The only life after death any human being will ever know is staying in a marriage or a partnership after it’s over. And that’s not life—it’s livi...
About twenty minutes ago, during a commercial break, Melba had thought she’d heard a helicopter in the distance. Tom had been unable to hear it, but that was no surprise, given his progressive hearing...
A man lives morally all his life, then in one weak moment commits an act that damns him in his own eyes and threatens his liberty, even his life.
Some of what she said actually offended me. Caitlin truly was a liberal when she arrived in Natchez, and she routinely chastised me for being too conservative. But now it seems that her liberal convic...
Some harsher truths: that the world they will find beyond the borders of Mississippi looks very different from the one that nurtured them to this point; that the whites among them might soon find them...
Have crystal meth over in Natchez? Of course we do. I’m not interested in the meth. I’m interested in the men who make and sell it. Walker’s eyes narrow, then go wide with comprehension. And what exac...
It’s a grim reality, but the river towns are dying in Mississippi, by a slow exsanguination of people and talent that functions like a wasting disease.
He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence...
God is all powerful.God is good.Evil exists.You can reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three.
A man walks the straight and narrow all his life; he follows the rules, stays within the lines; then one day he makes a misstep. He crosses a line and sets in motion a chain of events that will take f...
He know how to work the computers, navigate our intranet? Would he know the user names or passwords of the reporters? No. But if Nick didn’t delete the files, then it could be anybody. How the hell do...
When a parent dies, your center of gravity is altered. Even if you lived apart from them—even if you walled yourself off from all contact—you are irrevocably lessened by their passing. Death, like gra...
Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand. I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me...
Mia’s eyes for too long would send me straight down the road Drew has already traveled. The reality of a stunningly beautiful and intelligent young woman explaining why it’s all right for you to make...
McCrae was the kind of southerner who had only left the parish of his birth to serve his country in wartime or to carry bulls across the state for mating purposes.
Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We’re still in the cave. It’s just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes. We make alliances and try to be civil, we save the weak instead of leaving them out in the cold...