There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.

One old lady who wants her head lifted wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a book club.

Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can.

Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.

... the novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture.