Nothing needs to happen to a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.

When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

The meaning of the story is the story.

Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy.

Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

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

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.