If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.

A God you understood would be less than yourself.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.