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

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

I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

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

We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.