The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

Harcourt sent my book to Evelyn Waugh and his comment was: “If this is really the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.” My mother was vastly insulted. She put the emphasis on if and lady. Does he suppose you’re not a lady? she says.

I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.

Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.

If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.

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