We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.