The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

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.

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

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.