The meaning of the story is the story.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

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!

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.