The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.

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

I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.... when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.