"Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing."
— Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)

"Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk."
— Pat Conroy

"Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets."
— James McBride (The Color of Water 10th Anniversary Edition)

"Walls of speech, space inwards--
wound into yourself,
you rave your way to the very last one.

The fog burns off.

The heat sinks in."
— Paul Celan (Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan)