If, in the middle of World War II, a general could be writing a poem, then maybe I was not so irrelevant after all. Maybe the general was doing more … - Robert Penn Warren

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They’re inexpensive and easy to procure.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name — Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave — which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, “Gee, listen to this — ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves — ’” The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not