The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

I don't think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then 'smile darkly and ignore the howls.' Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.

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