There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.