The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.

The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.

Being a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham.

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

...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.

Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.