He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.

The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment.

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. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

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

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.