Unadaptability is often a virtue.

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.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.

You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

I am very handy with my advice and then when anybody appears to be following it, I get frantic.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.