Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

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.

In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.

Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

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.