Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.