Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.

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

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.