I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.

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

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech

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

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” (August 9, 1955)