What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

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 write to discover what I know.

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are

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.

Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.