I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

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

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.