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

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!

A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

But learned people can analyze for me why I fear hell and their implication is that there is no hell. But I believe in hell. Hell seems a great deal more feasible to my weak mind than heaven. No doubt because hell is a more earth-seeming thing. I can fancy the tortures of the damned but I cannot imagine the disembodied souls hanging in a crystal for all eternity praising God.

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.