Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.

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

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

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

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.