People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.

Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.

The meaning of the story is the story.