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

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.

He knew that he was the stuff of which fanatics and madmen are made and that he had turned his destiny as if with his bare will. He kept himself upright on a very narrow line between madness and emptiness and when the time came for him to lose his balance he intended to lurch toward emptiness and fall on the side of his choice.

Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.