I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!

In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.