you can't fit the same religion to every man any mo' than you can the same pair of breeches. The big man takes the big breeches an' the little man takes the small ones, an' it's jest the same with religion. It may be cut after one pattern, but it's might apt to get its shape from the wearer inside. Why, thar ain't any text so peaceable that it ain't drawn blood from somebody.

... the novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.

It is lovely, when I forget all birthdays, including my own, to find that somebody remembers me.

He who demands little gets it.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.