The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.

It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

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

Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one way or another, even though he knows nothing about the visible church. His kind of Christianity may not be socially desirable, but will be real in the sight of God.