Quotes by Reynolds Price

Even now, after whatever gains feminism has made in involving fathers in the rearing of their children, I still think virtually all of us spend the most formative years of our lives very much in the presence of women.

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it.

I always say the late 60s, early 70s in American education were really exciting times to teach. The late 70s, on the other hand, were awfully dull. People tended to be quiet and repressed and all headed off to business school or something.

I said to one of my students a couple of years ago, what is it with you people? You never get off the phone to one another, you travel through whole continents to be with one another for 14 hours. And he said, Mr. Price, we had to invent families of our own, our own families disappeared.

I think if we are realistic, the South - the old Confederate states - really only has one entirely unique feature that other parts of the country don't have, and that is this nearly 400-year history of tremendous intimacy, in every sense of the word, good and evil, between two very different kinds of peoples: people who were brought here against their wishes from Africa and a largely Anglo-white population.

I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern.

Our mothers, our aunts, the grandmothers, the babysitters, and if you're a boy, and you're a sensitive boy, which theoretically novelists are supposed to be, you do subliminally pick up a great deal about female sensibility.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

You have to realize that your work is done by your body, and if your body is in very bad health, it's not going to work for you no matter how young you are. So, I'm a bit of an athletic coach when it comes to trying to respect my body's needs and tendencies, and when I teach students, I try and persuade them of the same.