When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which is both natural and supernatural--understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.

A God you understood would be less than yourself.