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.

She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it

[Simone Weil's] life is almost a perfect blend of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.