Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel thing.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.