To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.