We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.

The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are

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.