[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

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

It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.