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.

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.

It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

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.

Tennessee's a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia's a lousy state too.

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.