It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

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.

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.