Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.

Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.

There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

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.

Grace changes us and change is painful".

He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.