A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibility. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us.

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.

I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.

Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962