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If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.

There's a grace about the South and a toughness about it, too.

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

The thing about the South is we accept our history. We don't push it under the rug.

Power, privilege, and violence are not, and never were, strictly Southern issues in America.

It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.

The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?