I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

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

Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.

...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I write to discover what I know.