I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class southern life.

My daddy had a pocket watch that he wore at all times in court. I gave Greg the watch and showed him how Daddy used to use it.

The tradition of the South is not urban... I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I'm concerned, that part is Greg's for life. I've had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I've always refused.

This was life in the '30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child.

I'm a slow worker; I'm, I think, a steady worker.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn't have an eventful childhood.

It was something I never expected to - I never expected the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers.

So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.