I've always felt sort of like in between things. Like I fit in when I was working construction. I more or less could do my job. I didn't get fired. I got paid. I could do it. But it was always sort of like working under cover. Now when I'm meeting academic people and going to these things they have [conferences], basically it's still the same thing. I'm still under cover. Then, I was sort of a closet intellectual passing as a construction worker. Now, I'm a construction worker passing as an academic.

[on a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, in a 2011 interview with the Tennessee Literary Project, an archive at Middle Tennessee State University] The Signet edition of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was the best 35 cents I ever spent.