““I came to absorb the history of the Virginia Tidewater—that primordial American demesne where the land was sucked dry by tobacco, laid waste and destroyed a whole century before golden California became an idea, much less a hope or a westward dream—I realized that the Dabney farm must have been as nondescript and as pathetic a relic as any of the scores of shrunken, abandoned “plantations” scattered for a hundred miles across the tidelands between the Potomac and the James.””
![“Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what [a] friend of mine calls "the fleas of life"-you know, colds, hangovers, bills, sprained ankles and little nuisances of one sort or another.” quote by William Styron](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ecc/william-styron-3859_friendship_every-writer-since-the-beginning-of-time_83391.jpg)
