Whenever you are just about to decide that Americans are selfish, unpatriotic, and unintelligent, they always prove themselves the most liberal and l… - William Alexander Percy

Our woods are not made for walking because the vines and bushes are too rampant and the rattlesnakes too much at home. But the high levee is perfect for a stroll, which you can extend, if so minded, a hundred miles in either direction. (Ch. 12, on Greenville, Mississippi)

Delta girls are born dancing and never stop, which is as it should be, for surely it is the finest form of human amusement except tennis and talking. (Ch. 12)

What I wrote seemed to me more essentially myself than anything I did or said. It often gushed up almost involuntarily like automatic writing, and the difficulty lay in keeping the hot gush continuous and unselfconscious while at the same time directing it with cold intellect into form. I never could write in cold blood. The results were intensely personal, whatever their other defects. (Ch. 12, on writing poetry)