I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that.

In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which is both natural and supernatural--understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.