All you boys seem to think about is the things you can see and touch—that ain't living. It's the things you can feel inside of you—that's what living… - Erskine Caldwell

The spring-time ain't going to let you fool it by hiding away inside a durn cotton mill. It knows you got to stay on the land to feel good. That's because humans made the mills. God made the land, but you don't see Him building durn cotton mills. That's how I know better than to go up there like the rest of them. I stay where God made a place for me.

Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Preachers has got to preach against something. It wouldn't do them no good to preach for everything. They got to be against something every time." "I never looked at it that way before," Jeeter said, "but there might be a lot in what you say. Though, take for instance, God and heaven—you wouldn't preach against them, would you, Sister Bessie?" "Good preachers don't preach about God and heaven, and things like that. They always preach against something, like hell and the devil. Them is things to be against. It wouldn't do a preacher no good to preach for God. He's got to preach against the devil and all wicked and sinful things. That's what the people like to hear about. They want to hear about the bad things.