When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

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

You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.

A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibility. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!

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