Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.

...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.

Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.